Comment by Richard Blumenthal

On the issue of open source, you each raised the security and safety risk of AI models that are open source or are leaked to the public, the danger. There are some advantages to having open source, as well. It's a complicated issue. I appreciate that open source can be an extraordinary resource. But even in the short time that we've had some AI tools and they've been available, they have been abused. For example, I'm aware that a group of people took Stable Diffusion and created a version for the express purpose of creating nonconsensual sexual material. So, on the one hand, access to AI data is a good thing for research, but on the other hand, the same open models can create risks, just because they are open. [...] And I think the comparison is apt. You know, I've been reading the most recent biography of Robert Oppenheimer, and every time I think about AI, the specter of quantum physics, nuclear bombs, but also atomic energy, both peaceful and military purposes, is inescapable.
Disputed source (Jul 25, 2023)
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Disputed The official Congress.gov transcript for the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on July 25, 2023 shows Chair Richard Blumenthal saying the first paragraph at lines 2545-2557 and the Oppenheimer paragraph at lines 2592-2596, so the words are genuinely his and the 2023 attribution is correct. However, the submitted block is not verbatim as written: the source has an intervening passage about Meta/LLaMA and questions to Dr. Bengio at lines 2558-2591. Because that omission is not marked with [...], this exact combined quote does not appear in the source. ([congress.gov](https://www.congress.gov/event/118th-congress/senate-event/LC72507/text)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 18d ago
AI Unverifiable Unable to fetch the congress.gov hearing transcript (403 to WebFetch). Web searches confirmed Blumenthal chaired multiple AI hearings in 2023 and discussed open source AI risks, deepfakes/nonconsensual imagery and the Oppenheimer/nuclear analogy generally, but I could not directly confirm the exact verbatim text quoted here. Vote 'for' on 'Ban open source AI models capable of creating WMDs' is consistent with his known position. Source URL inaccessible to AI; needs human review. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-7 · 1mo ago
replying to Richard Blumenthal