Legislators discuss how to craft guardrails for artificial intelligence as tech CEOs speak with senators on Capitol Hill. Elon Musk told reporters as he left the meeting that the meeting “may go down in history as being very important for the future of civilization.” As part of the Senate’s inaugural “AI Insight Forum,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer hosted a panel of tech executives, labor and civil rights leaders. The event was organized by Senators Mike Rounds, R-S.D., Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Todd Young, R-Ind., who have worked with Schumer on other AI-education sessions. Top tech executives in attendance Wednesday included: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Palantir CEO Alex Karp IBM CEO Arvind Krishna Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg A panel with more than 60 senators took place behind closed doors, according to Schumer. According to Schumer, the closed forum allowed attendees to engage in open discussion without the usual time and format restrictions associated with a public hearing. The public, however, will be able to view some future forums, according to Schumer. In an interview with reporters following the morning session, AFL-CIO’s Shuler described the meeting as a rare opportunity for a wide range of voices to be heard. Shuler responded to a question about speaking with Musk by saying, “It was just an opportunity for us to be in each other’s space, but we don’t often cross paths, so to have a worker’s perspective and voice in the room with tech executives, advocates, and legislators is an uncommon experience.” On his way out, Musk told reporters that the discussion was very civilized among some of the world’s smartest minds.