Christopher A. Coons

Mr. President, I would like to start by thanking my colleague from the State of Tennessee.

This has been a tremendous experience in working together to find a way to protect creators and, frankly, all Americans.

We live in an age of AI anxiety, AI optimism, and AI experimentation in a way never previously thought possible. In the next 5 minutes, I could generate a brief film in which a colleague, say, from the State of Texas is the hero of a major football game or a colleague from the State of Tennessee is performing what is otherwise known as one of Elvis Presley's landmark pieces of music.

We each do have a right in what makes us ``us'' in our voices, in our images, and in the property rights that attach to our likenesses.

This bipartisan compromise is the result of years of negotiation with the creative community, with platforms, with studios, and with a lot of different interest groups, including First Amendment and civil rights advocates.

This bill, the NO FAKES Act, creates a new intellectual property right to allow not just celebrities and famous Americans but all Americans to control their digital revenue. As my colleague just said, it creates a takedown system to allow you to promptly enforce those rights if you believe that a platform has wrongfully put it up and a prompt counter-notice process to allow you to have it taken down if the rights holder or the platform decides that it violates some fundamental right like the First Amendment. There are key and explicit protections for free speech, for parody, for satire, for documentaries, for newscasts, and for bio-pics.

The work that went into this, over years, was substantive and serious. I want to thank my chief counsel, James Barton, and I want to thank my colleague and her staff for their tireless work to first secure the support of the movie and music industries--the actors, singers, songwriters, performers--to secure the commitment and engagement of online platforms, like YouTube and TikTok; to get AI companies, like OpenAI and IBM, on board; and to get organized labor and child safety groups on board.

Ultimately, our bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee by a voice vote, and it has 14 bipartisan cosponsors. It is my hope that we will be able to pass this today in recognition of the hard work of my colleague from Tennessee and our cosponsors, Senator Tillis and Senator Klobuchar.

With that, I yield the floor to my colleague from Tennessee.

Mr. President, if I might just briefly conclude my comments on the same matter. I look forward to working closely with my colleague from Texas and my colleague from Tennessee to find compromise that allows us to move this bill forward. It is one of the most ready- for-enactment, defined, complete bills in the AI space that creates a new intellectual property right for all Americans. We should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Of course I respect First Amendment concerns, and, of course, I want to make sure that the notice and takedown process is set in terms of its incentives such that it leans towards protecting political satire and other forms of free speech, and I very much look

forward to working in the coming weeks to try and resolve this such that Senator Blackburn and I can see this bill enacted.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are about to go back to our States, to recess sometime tonight or tomorrow, and then to proceed to the general election.

And there is an issue that hangs over the American people that concerns me, and I am sure concerns all of my colleagues, but on which we likely won't act before we adjourn.

Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa and I are the cosponsors of the AI Whistleblower Protection Act, and it is one of a dozen urgently needed and important bills that would inject some guardrails, protections, and accountability into the rapidly advancing technology of AI.

Why is this a concern for me? Because in recent days, in recent weeks, there have been alarming incidents of AI agents breaking out of their containment sandboxes, taking on actions that even their designers and developers couldn't predict and can't fully explain.

And in recent days, the titans of the AI industry--folks like Sam Altman from Open AI or Demis Hassabis from Google DeepMind or Dario Amodei from Anthropic--have been saying AI is improving itself so fast that we are at risk of it exceeding the capabilities of humans to control it--frankly, even to understand it.

So for those of you watching who might want to get tuned in to the debate and to the discussion, to be better informed, to be better engaged, I want to recommend a movie I just saw. It has got an unusual title. It is called ``The AI Doc: Or how I Became an Apocaloptimist.''

And the director, Daniel Roher, is a documentary maker who is facing being a parent for the first time, and he is trying to get his head around alternating depictions, predictions of doom, literally the extinction of the human race, or a utopia where AI will unlock the secrets to cheap, abundant, clean fusion energy or solve all the diseases, cancer, and other ravages known to mankind.

And in the course of an hour and a half, this very capable documentarian interviews dozens of the leading commentators, technology leaders, business leaders, civil society leaders, and researchers.

The first 20 minutes of the movie was so depressing I had to turn it off. It was so clearly predicting and making a compelling case for the imminent end of the human species at the hands of artificial intelligence that it became overwhelming. The next 30 minutes does the opposite. It gives you the most optimistic view possible: apocalypse or optimism.

And we here in the Senate and in the executive branch and in the House have a responsibility to reasonably, responsibly regulate in a timely way. There are so many dangerous technologies developed in the last century where we put guardrails around them, whether it was jet airplanes or nuclear energy, automobiles or the banking system.

I was in a terrible car accident end of June. I am here today because of airbags and seatbelts. Those were first advocated by safety folks like Ralph Nader. The Big Three auto companies mostly resisted. Why do we need seatbelts? When airbags came out, why the extra cost?

I was in a five-car accident where all five vehicles were totaled and every passenger walked away. And as I walked away, as I walked out of the hospital, I said to a friend: Thank God. What a miracle.

And he turned to me and said: And thanks for the seatbelts and the airbags.

When you get on an airplane and fly across the country, none of us probably can explain exactly how it works, exactly what the technology is. But we know that it has been maintained. It has been designed, maintained, funded, and flown by a tightly regulated group of people.

Airline pilots operate under very strict standards. Those who maintain and operate airplanes operate under very strict standards. That is why we don't have tragic disasters all the time.

So there are some good, concrete, bipartisan ideas for how we can inject some responsibility: some third-party auditing; some traceable records of what is happening, what has been done; some predeployment testing.

Earlier this week, I introduced my bipartisan AI Systems Transparency Act with Senators Lankford and Britt and Schatz; four Senators--two Republicans, two Democrats, from very different backgrounds-- introducing a bill to require transparency about what is driving these AI models so we can better study them, test them, and understand them.

There are lots of other good ideas that other Members have, but we, unfortunately, have a President who has said that the risks of AI are a hoax and, while hosting the titans of the AI industry, has refused to take seriously the idea that we in any way should meaningfully regulate this industry.

I understand we are in a dire competition with China. I agree with the assertion that the society or country that wins the race to frontier AI will have a decided advantage in national security, in science, in industry, in business of all kinds.

But we can and should do both: compete against China, invest in frontier models, and have responsible safety to prevent the worst scenarios from coming true.

We are able to do this in banking, to give one other example. Delaware, where I am from, is a major banking center. Every one of the largest banks in America has major operations in Delaware, and they operate under some real restrictions.

There are OCC and FDIC inspectors, regulators in every bank. They are required to follow know-your-customer laws, anti-money laundering standards. And after the 2008 to 2009 crisis, no one from the banking industry comes to me and says: We need a lighter touch regulation.

They understand that safety and soundness--the rule of law--allows the United States to have deep capital markets and safety.

Artificial intelligence is transforming our world, and whether it is adopting the AI whistleblower app that Senator Grassley and I are advocating for or it is adopting the AI Systems Transparency Act that Senator Britt and I and other colleagues are advocating for or other bipartisan bills, when we return in what will likely be a period of greater anxiety about AI, we need to act.

We need to take up legislation and move forward reasonable and responsible regulation.

Mr. President, I wonder if you have heard the story of Jason Rezaian. Jason was a Washington Post reporter--an Iranian American--who was stationed in Tehran and reporting for the Washington Post on the goings-on of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In 2014, he was arrested by the secret police and disappeared. Months later, it was revealed that he was a political prisoner being held at a notorious prison inside Iran. Jason was ultimately detained for 544 days before he was released, which he has recounted in his harrowing tale, ``Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison.''

When Jason returned to the United States at last, having been freed, returned to his family, what was the first thing he got from the U.S. Government? A tax bill, a tax bill for $20,000 for late filing and late payment.

Mr. Rezaian is a resourceful guy. He went to the IRS, and he said: Hey, how can you charge me for late payment, penalties, and fees? I was in prison in Iran.

They said: Well, how are we supposed to know that?

It was on the front page of the Washington Post.

They said: Well, we can't just forgive fees and fines for anybody who comes and talks to us.

They went through months and months of arguing back and forth, and he managed to get most of the fines and fees reduced but not all. And so after I met with him, now years ago, I drafted and introduced the Stop Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.

I bet you can guess what this bill does. There is a corollary--a companion--in the House, the End Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, and I am grateful to Congresswomen Titus and Tenney of Nevada and New York for their cosponsorship. It has passed the House unanimously.

Tonight, Senator Rounds and I have an opportunity to ask for unanimous consent that we pass this legislation in the Senate and send it to President Trump's desk.

Incredibly, when we asked for the score on this bill, it is positive because the IRS insists on litigating these cases, and they almost always lose them. They waste staff time and money suing people who were hostages or prisoners overseas.

This is simple; it is common sense; it is bipartisan; and it is compassionate. I want to thank Senators Crapo and Wyden for allowing Senator Rounds and me to pull this bill out of their larger tax package and pass it by unanimous consent tonight.

And I want to thank Senator Mike Rounds for being an early adopter. When I explained what happened to Jason Rezaian, he said: We should pass that and pass it right away.

Well, for better or worse, it has taken years, but here we are tonight on the verge of sending it to the President's desk. I cannot say how grateful I am for the chance to get this simple, clear, commonsense bill passed to help Americans who might tragically be held hostage or imprisoned wrongfully overseas.

Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 9496 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, with that, I understand this bill has been adopted by unanimous consent, and I am delighted to say that the End Tax Penalties on American Hostages bill will at long last go to our President's desk for his signature.