United States President Joe Biden recently signed an executive order as part of an effort to regulate artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT.
The Democrat's new AI executive order is known as the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. It builds on previous administration efforts to ensure that powerful AI systems are safe and are being used responsibly.
Biden's AI Executive Order
In a short speech before signing the executive order, Biden said that it is a testament to what the United States stands for "safety, security, trust, openness, American leadership, and the undeniable rights endowed by a creator that no creation can take away."
Biden's lengthy order is an ambitious attempt to accommodate the hopes and fears of everyone from tech CEOs to civil rights advocates. It also seeks to spell out how the president's vision for AI works with his vision for everything else.
The recently signed order shows the limits of the executive branch's power. While it has more teeth to it compared to the voluntary commitments Biden has secured from some of the biggest AI companies, many of its provisions do not and cannot have the force of the law supporting them, as per Vox.
Additionally, the provisions' effectiveness will largely depend on how the agencies named within the order carry them out. They could also depend on if those particular agencies' abilities to make such regulations face legal challenges in court.
The order directs various federal agencies and departments that are responsible for overseeing everything from housing to health to national security to create standards and regulations. These would focus on the use or oversight of artificial intelligence. These include guidance on the responsible use of the technology in areas such as criminal justice, education, health care, housing, and labor.
It would focus on protecting Americans' civil rights and liberties moving forward. The agencies and departments affected by the executive order are also mandated to develop guidelines that AI developers must adhere to as they build and deploy AI technology. It also dictates how the government uses artificial intelligence.
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Attempts To Regulate Artificial Intelligence
Biden's new executive order is the U.S.'s farthest-reaching official policy on artificial intelligence to date. It is nearly 20,000 words long and uses the term "artificial intelligence" to refer to automated predictive, perceptive, or generative software that can mimic certain human abilities, according to Scientific American.
The White House's action also came two days before the beginning of an international summit on AI safety that was organized and hosted by the United Kingdom. During that event, world leaders would discuss global strategy on the rapidly advancing technology.
Biden's executive order comes as his administration has been under mounting pressure to address the issue with the technology since late last year. That was when ChatGPT and other generative AI apps burst into public consciousness.
Since then, AI companies have been sending executives to testify in front of Congress and briefing lawmakers on the promises and pitfalls of the technology. The situation comes as activist groups have urged the federal government to crack down on AI's dangerous uses, including making new cyberweapons and creating misleading deepfakes, said the New York Times.
