The president of the United States, Joe Biden, met yesterday the CEOs of the main artificial intelligence companies and made it clear to them that their products must guarantee security before being available to the public. The White House referred to “risks to security, human and civil rights, privacy, employment, and democratic values.” The meeting, a two-hour gathering, featured Sundar Pichai (Google), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Dario Amodei (Anthropic), along with Vice President Kamala Harris and top security and economic officials from the administration. Companies will participate in a public evaluation of their AI systems.
The White House reported that Biden, who has used ChatGPT to experiment with it, told the CEOs of those companies that it is imperative to mitigate both current and potential risks that AI poses to individuals, society, and national security. According to the US Executive, the meeting included “a frank and constructive debate” on the need for companies “to be more transparent with policy makers, the public and others about their AI systems”; the importance “of being able to evaluate, verify and validate the safety and efficacy” of AIs; and the need to ensure that those systems “are safe from malicious actors and attacks.”
Kamala Harris noted in a statement that technology can improve people’s lives, but it can raise security, privacy and civil rights issues. She called on businesses that they have a “legal responsibility” to ensure the safety of their artificial intelligence products and that the government is open to promoting new regulations and supporting new laws on artificial intelligence. Sam Altman, whose company is responsible for ChatGPT, told reporters after the meeting that the companies were “surprisingly, on the same page about what needs to happen.”
The White House explained that it is going to invest 140 million dollars from the National Science Foundation to launch seven new AI research institutes and assured that the White House Office of Management and Budget will publish policy guidelines on the use of AI by the federal government. Shortly after Biden announced his re-election bid, the Republican National Committee produced a video depicting a dystopian future during Biden’s second term, built entirely from AI footage.
Last February, Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to eliminate bias in the use of AI. The US government has also published an AI Bill of Rights and a risk management framework. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division also said they would use their legal powers to fight AI-related damages.
