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📝 Page Status: Draft — sourced but not yet reviewed

  • Status: draft
  • Sources: 1
  • Relationships: 5
  • Research debt items: 5

Senate Artificial Intelligence Caucus

Summary

The Senate Artificial Intelligence Caucus is a bipartisan informal Senate group founded in 2019 by Martin Heinrich and Rob Portman; as of 2026 its co-chairs are Heinrich and Mike Rounds.

Verified Facts

  • Heinrich's office states that the bipartisan Senate Artificial Intelligence Caucus was formed in 2019 by Senators Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Rob Portman (R-OH), and that Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) later became co-chair in Portman's place.1
  • The same page describes the caucus as working "to develop smart policy that balances AI's risks and rewards to ensure the competitiveness of the U.S. economy, while maintaining important ethical standards."1
  • As of the 2026-09-17 access date, the page listed Booker, Braun, Coons, Daines, Ernst, Hassan, Heinrich, Hickenlooper, Husted, Kelly, Luján, Lummis, Peters, Romney, Rosen, Rounds, Schatz, and Young as members.1
  • The page claims the caucus has had 15 bills become law since 2019, including provisions it identifies as the Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act and National AI Research Resource Task Force Act (P.L. 116-283), the AI in Government Act (P.L. 116-260), the Deepfake Report Act (P.L. 116-283), and the AI for the Armed Forces Act (P.L. 116-283).1

Historical Context

Senate caucuses are informal member organizations, not committees of jurisdiction. This caucus is the standing bipartisan forum for Senate AI policy education. It overlaps in personnel with the 2024 Bipartisan Senate AI Working Group (Heinrich and Rounds served in both) but is a separate, longer-lived body. Its published framing is competitiveness plus ethical standards, not a development pause of the kind later proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders.

Relevance to Open Source and Software Companies

Caucus-associated statutes cited on the Heinrich page (national AI initiative, government-use rules, deepfake reporting, DoD AI training) shape federal R&D funding, agency procurement, and research-resource access that open and commercial labs both use. Membership lists are a starting map of senators already briefed on AI who may receive pause, liability, copyright, or compute-export bills.

Relationships

  • ORG-SENATE-AI-CAUCUS cites SRC-HEINRICH-SENATE-AI-CAUCUS.
  • ORG-SENATE-AI-CAUCUS related_to PERSON-MARTIN-HEINRICH.
  • ORG-SENATE-AI-CAUCUS related_to PERSON-MIKE-ROUNDS.
  • ORG-SENATE-AI-CAUCUS related_to PERSON-TODD-YOUNG.
  • ORG-SENATE-AI-CAUCUS related_to PERSON-CORY-BOOKER.

Sources

  1. SRC-HEINRICH-SENATE-AI-CAUCUS: Artificial Intelligence Caucus | Senator Martin Heinrich.

Research Debt

  • Corroborate each claimed public-law citation against Congress.gov / Statutes at Large.
  • Refresh membership against sitting senators (the page still listed Mitt Romney after his Senate term ended).
  • Create person pages for remaining listed members beyond Heinrich, Rounds, Young, and Booker.
  • Add the March 13, 2019 Heinrich–Portman founding press release as a separate source.
  • Confirm whether Sanders is or is not a member from a current roster (he does not appear on the Heinrich page accessed 2026-09-17).

Document metadata

  • Last verified: 2026-09-17

  1. SRC-HEINRICH-SENATE-AI-CAUCUS — Official Senate caucus page. Self-reported membership and accomplishment list; corroboration pending. ↩↩↩↩