The sweeping order will help the U.S. government as a top technology customer by requiring advanced AI models to undergo evaluation before being used by federal employees, according to three people involved in discussions about the order. It is said that it is about taking advantage of the role. This long-term measure is aimed at lowering barriers to immigration for highly skilled workers and increasing America’s technological advantage. Federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and intelligence agencies, will be required to conduct assessments to determine how to incorporate AI into their operations, with a focus on strengthening national cyber defenses. .
The White House sent out invitations Tuesday night to a “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence” event the president will host on Monday, according to documents seen by The Washington Post.
The White House declined to comment. The order has not yet been finalized, so details and timing plans are subject to change, officials said.
The White House is taking executive action as the European Union and other governments work to stop the most dangerous uses of artificial intelligence. European authorities are expected to reach agreement by the end of the year on an EU AI law, a wide-ranging package aimed at protecting consumers from potentially dangerous AI applications. Lawmakers in the U.S. Congress are in the early stages of developing bipartisan legislation to address this technology.
Artificial intelligence will be a key test for the Biden administration, which arrived in Washington promising to rein in allegations of fraud in Silicon Valley. Nearly three years later, governments have achieved few victories in their efforts to address the harms of social media, privacy violations and the impact of technology on children. Antitrust enforcement officials appointed by Mr. Biden have brought high-profile competition cases against some of tech’s most powerful companies, including Amazon, but have also suffered crushing defeats in court.
(Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, whose interim CEO Patti Stonesifer is a member of Amazon’s board of directors.)
The launch of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools is accelerating a global push to regulate large US technology companies, and recent rapid advances in artificial intelligence have heightened the stakes. Policymakers around the world are increasingly concerned that AI could exacerbate long-standing concerns about the impact of technology on jobs, surveillance, and democracy, especially ahead of a critical year of elections around the world. There is.
The White House first announced plans for the executive order in July, and Biden most recently hinted at a September action plan during a meeting with the President’s Council of Science and Technology Advisors in San Francisco.
“This fall, I intend to take executive action, and my administration will continue to work on bipartisan legislation to help lead America toward responsible AI innovation,” Biden said.
Monday’s executive order is expected to build on a series of voluntary commitments signed by 15 companies, including OpenAI, Google, Photoshop maker Adobe and chipmaker Nvidia. The deal, brokered by the White House in September, requires companies to develop technology to identify AI-generated images and includes a pledge to share safety data with governments and academics.
The evaluation of large-scale language models for government purchases, an exercise known as “red teaming,” will be led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal laboratory known as NIST that develops standards for new technologies, officials said. Two of them revealed this. people. NIST released a framework for managing AI risks this year and regularly collaborates with other government agencies on AI.
Governments have traditionally used purchasing power to push for stronger digital controls. The 2021 Cybersecurity Executive Order directs the Department of Commerce to develop cybersecurity standards for companies selling software services to the federal government. Officials said they expect the move to have ripples beyond government contractors and change practices across the industry and outside the United States.
The immigration rules follow years of efforts by Silicon Valley to push Washington to lower barriers for engineers and other high-skilled workers amid fierce competition for technical talent. The Department of Homeland Security has indicated that this work is already underway. The agency announced Monday that it is proposing changes to the H-1B program, a high-skilled visa program widely used in Silicon Valley. The State Department also plans to launch a new program focused on artificial intelligence talent, one of the people said.
In addition to changes to the immigration process, federal agencies will need to take steps to assess the size of their current AI talent pools.
Meanwhile, Congress is moving ahead with its own legislative plans with support from the White House. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York will host the second AI Insights Forum, which is expected to be the foundation of bipartisan efforts to rein in artificial intelligence. Attendees included venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Aidan Gomez, co-founder of AI startup Kohia, and representatives from civil society and labor organizations.