On Monday, President Joe Biden issued a comprehensive executive order on artificial intelligence, paving the way for industry regulations and financing for the US government to make additional investments in the field.
The decree covers a wide range of topics, from industrial rules and civil rights to government hiring sprees.
A senior White House official, who wished to remain anonymous for the purposes of the call, stated during a media preview of the directive on Sunday that artificial intelligence has so many elements that effective rules must be broad in scope.
The official remarked, “AI policy is like walking into a decathlon, and there are ten different events here.”
It is not an option for us to simply decide to prioritize safety, equity, or privacy over other concerns. All of these tasks are required of you.
Additionally, the official demanded “significant bipartisan legislation” to boost the nation’s AI-related goals. Despite hosting a private session with business leaders in September, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has not yet introduced any noteworthy AI legislation.
A portion of the order expands on a prior nonbinding agreement that seven of the leading US tech companies working on artificial intelligence signed in July. This agreement covered things like employing outside experts to check their systems for flaws and disclosing their important discoveries.
Utilizing the Defense Production Act, the order compels those businesses to lawfully provide the federal government with the results of their safety tests.
Additionally, it mandates that the Commerce Department develop guidelines for “watermarking” AI content to indicate that essays produced by ChatGPT or deepfaked movies were not made by humans.
The decree increases federal hiring in AI and funds for new AI research. To help job searchers find AI government positions, the White House has developed a comparable website called AI.gov.
Government financing, according to Fei-Fei Li, co-director of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, is essential for AI to be able to address significant human concerns.
“With data and interdisciplinary talent, the public sector holds a unique opportunity to cure cancer, cure rare diseases, map biodiversity globally, understand and predict wildfires, find climate solutions, and supercharge our teachers,” Li stated. “The public sector is capable of so much, but at the moment, our severe resource shortage starves all of this.”
The managing director of the nonprofit AI Now Institute, which studies how technology affects society, Sarah Myers West, praised Biden for incorporating moral and social issues in the order.
“It’s fantastic to witness the White House setting the standard on the matters that the public cares about the most: employment, civil rights, privacy protection, and competition,” Myers West texted. “This emphasizes the need to appropriately address the present in order to manage the risks associated with AI in the future.”
In an effort to establish a self-regulatory tone, “the key going forward will be to ensure strong enforcement: industry cannot be left to lead the discussion on how to adequately address the impact of AI on the broader public,” the speaker stated.