In March 2024, a Brazilian senator traveled on a commercial flight to Washington, D.C. Marcos Pontes, a 61-year-old former astronaut, had become a central figure in the effort to regulate artificial intelligence in Brazil — where a draft bill had proposed serious restrictions on the developing technology. Confident, loquacious, and a former minister of science, technology and innovation, Pontes felt he was uniquely qualified among his colleagues to understand the complicated issues surrounding A...