The Biden administration issued new legal guidance regarding AI at the US White House on Monday 30th of October, 2023. This comes ahead of an international AI safety summit at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, UK on the 1st of November. President Biden and Vice President Harris build on the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, a framework published in October of 2022. So how does the United States government consider what is responsible AI innovation, and what AI executive order can we expect from President Biden at next weeks White House event?
President Biden AI Executive Order text
The Biden-Harris administration has taken executive action on the potential harms of artificial intelligence technology. In addition to this, the United States Congress is tabling legislation in response to the unprecedented rapidity of AI R&D both nationally and across the globe.
This planned announcement will translate the research of the White House Office of Science into an actionable form for the court of law, as well as communicable terms for media reports. Big tech companies including Meta, Microsoft, Anthropic, Google, and of course OpenAI (the creator of ChatGPT) will be affected.
To summarize the Biden AI Executive Order text, it includes “the most sweeping actions ever taken to protect Americans from the potential risks of AI systems” as follows:
- Transparent: “Require that developers of the most powerful AI systems share their safety test results and other critical information with the U.S. government.”
- Trustworthy: “Develop standards, tools, and tests to help ensure that AI systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy.”
- Non-hazardous: “Protect against the risks of using AI to engineer dangerous biological materials.”
- Authentic: “Protect Americans from AI-enabled fraud and deception by establishing standards and best practices for detecting AI-generated content and authenticating official content.”
- Invulnerable: “Establish an advanced cybersecurity program to develop AI tools to find and fix vulnerabilities in critical software.”
- Iterable: “Order the development of a National Security Memorandum that directs further actions on AI and security.”
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Voluntary commitments to AI safety prior to the “Biden AI EO”
On July 21st, 2023, the White House convened with seven of the worlds leading AI companies — “Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI – to announce that the Biden-Harris Administration has secured voluntary commitments from these companies to help move toward safe, secure, and transparent development of AI technology.”
In hopes that the issue of AI safety will inspire co-operation between political opponents, Congress is developing bipartisan legislation for responsible development of artificial intelligence within the United States. In anticipation of what’s being referred to as the “Biden AI EO” for short, a selection of civil, technology, and human rights organisations have undersigned an accompanying letter. Published by The Leadership Conference of Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR), this list includes:
- Center for American Progress
- The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
- Center for Democracy & Technology
- Data & Society Research Institute
- Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
- NAACP
- Public Citizen
- Public Knowledge
- UnidosUS
Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights
The official White House website includes a proposed “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights“, detailing concerns on advanced AI models, their use by federal workers, and their potential risks to the civil society of American people.
“Among the great challenges posed to democracy today is the use of technology, data, and automated systems in ways that threaten the rights of the American public.” The White House puts a special emphasis on the healthcare system, citing that automated systems which are “supposed to help with patient care have proven unsafe, ineffective, or biased.” In the economic sector, “algorithms used in hiring and credit decisions have been found to reflect and reproduce existing unwanted inequities or embed new harmful bias and discrimination.” This follows a systemic trend of new technological threats and vulnerabilities, including how “unchecked social media data collection has been used to threaten people’s opportunities, undermine their privacy, or pervasively track their activity—often without their knowledge or consent.”
The international summit on AI safety at Bletchley Park
Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to speak at the international summit tomorrow, 1st November 2023. Held in Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, UK, the long-awaited artificial intelligence summit will give Vice President Harris an opportunity to speak on behalf of Americans in how we as a people protect against algorithmic discrimination, preserve civil liberties while also maintaining the country’s technological competitiveness, and the limitations of AI technology policy across big tech.
