President Biden calls AI executives to White House over security concerns | tech news
President Joe Biden met with CEOs of leading artificial intelligence companies Thursday, including Alphabet’s Microsoft and Google, and made it clear that they must ensure their products are secure before deploying them.
Generative artificial intelligence has become a buzzword this year, as apps like ChatGPT gain immense popularity among the general public and companies spur a rush to launch similar products that they believe will transform the way work is done.
Millions of users have begun testing such tools, which proponents say can make medical diagnoses, write screenplays, create legal briefs, and debug software, leading to growing concerns about how the technology is leading to privacy breaches, skewing employment decisions and could cause power fraud and misinformation campaigns.
Mr. Biden, who has used and experimented with ChatGPT, told officials they need to mitigate the current and potential risks that AI poses to individuals, society and national security, the White House said.
The meeting included an “open and constructive discussion” on the need for companies to be more transparent about their AI systems to policymakers, the importance of evaluating the security of such products and the need to protect them from malicious attacks, the white added house added .
The two-hour meeting, which began Thursday, included Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft Corp’s Satya Nadella, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. Vice President Kamala Harris and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan were also present.
Ms Harris said in a statement the technology has the potential to improve lives but could raise concerns about security, privacy and civil rights. She told chief executives they have a “legal responsibility” to ensure the security of their artificial intelligence products and that the administration is open to pushing new regulations and supporting new artificial intelligence laws.
In response to a question about whether companies are on the same page on regulations, Altman told reporters after the meeting, “We’re surprisingly on the same page about what needs to happen.”
The administration also announced a $140 million investment by the National Science Foundation to create seven new AI research institutes and said the White House Office of Administration and Budget will establish guidelines for the use of AI by the publish federal government.
Leading AI developers including Anthropic, Google, Hugging Face, NVIDIA Corp, OpenAI and Stability AI will participate in a public assessment of their AI systems.
Shortly after Biden announced his re-election bid, the Republican National Committee produced a video depicting a dystopian future during Biden’s second term, made entirely with AI imagery.
Such political ads are expected to become more common as AI technology spreads.
US regulators have lagged behind the harsh approach taken by European governments in regulating technology and crafting strict rules on deepfakes and misinformation.
“We don’t see this as a race,” said a senior administration official, adding that the administration is working closely with the US-EU Trade and Technology Councils on the issue.
MORE : Artificial intelligence now flies tactical fighter jets all by itself
MORE : Italy lifts ChatGPT ban over potential privacy breaches