Senators studied AI for a year. Critics call the result ‘pathetic.â€

For much of the last year, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and a bipartisan group of his colleagues have been huddling with tech CEOs, civil rights leaders and top researchers to develop an “all hands on deck� plan to address the urgent threats posed by artificial intelligence.

On Wednesday, the Senate AI Gang, as the group is known, unveiled the fruits of that effort, celebrating a sprawling 31-page road map that calls for billions of new funding in AI research as the “deepestâ€� AI legislative document to date. But consumer advocates are furious about the final product, saying that the document is far too vague about how it will protect people from AIâ€s harms and that the senators†initiative is sucking up the oxygen from other efforts to aggressively regulate the technology.