President Joe Biden Monday signed what the administration sees as a ‘landmark’ Executive Order to ‘seize on the promise’, but also ‘manage the risks’ of artificial intelligence (AI).
AI is already very much a part of Americans’ daily lives. It’s in the algorithms used by social media and in personal assistants like Siri and Alexa, as well as in smart home devices, self-driving vehicles and automated customer service. The Biden administration wants to keep America in the lead when it comes to that sort of AI innovation, while also putting important guardrails in place.
“There’s no other way around it,” said President Biden at the signing ceremony, “in my view, it must be governed. That’s why we’re here today.”
The dual promise and peril of artificial intelligence have certainly grabbed the attention of the world this year, as fears of artificial intelligence outsmarting humanity have already been realized.
“AI devices are being used to deceive people,” said the President. “Deep fakes use AI-generated audio and video to smear reputations, spread fake news, and commit fraud.”
Figuring out how to regulate AI has been the focus, not just of the White House, but also of Congress. Oklahoma Senator James Lankford participated in one such hearing in May.
“We’ve got to actually land on what’s the right way to be able to manage this,” Lankford said in an interview outside the hearing room, “so we don’t limit the good things about AI.”
Biden says the chief aim of his Executive Order is to defend against hackers.
“That’s why I’m directing the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, both of them, to develop game-changing cyber protections that will make our computers and our critical infrastructure more secure than it is today,” Biden explained.
The order also requires that major developers of AI systems conduct and share the results of their safety tests. It calls for the development of standards and tests to ensure AI systems are secure and trustworthy, best practices for detecting AI-generated content (to help prevent fraud), and for the production of a report on AI’s potential labor-market impacts, among other things.
“I’m determined to do everything in my power to promote and demand responsible innovation.,” Biden concluded.
