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United States VP Discusses Dangers of AI with Top Tech CEOs
The Vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, and President Joe Biden's top advisers met with several CEOs of the AI industry to discuss concerns about the risks associated with AI use.
On May 4, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris met with the CEOs of OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and the AI startup Anthropoid. She was accompanied by nine top science, national security, policy, and economics advisers from the Biden administration. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the tech behemoth Meta, was absent from the meeting.
Before the meeting, the White House issued a flurry of AI-related announcements concerning financing AI research facilities, government AI policy, and evaluating AI systems.
According to the announcement, the meeting focused on the transparency of AI systems, the significance of evaluating and validating the safety of AI, and ensuring AI is protected from malicious actors.
The government and tech CEOs reportedly agreed that “more work is needed to develop and ensure appropriate safeguards and protections” for artificial intelligence.
The CEOs vowed to collaborate with the White House to ensure Americans “benefit from AI innovation.” No specific information was provided regarding the required safeguards or the nature of the engagement with the government.
Zuckerberg was absent from the meeting despite Meta's years of work on artificial intelligence. A White House official informed CNN that the focus was on the current leaders in the field.
The Biden administration also emphasized its efforts to address national security threats posed by artificial intelligence, explicitly mentioning cybersecurity and biosecurity without providing further details.
It was stated that these initiatives would ensure that AI companies “have access to best practices” for protecting AI networks from state cybersecurity experts from the “national security community.”
The White House is bullish on AI
The Biden Administration announced on the same day that it would allocate $140 million to establish seven new national AI research institutes, bringing the total number to 25 nationwide.
The White House stated, “These Institutes strengthen America's AI [research and development] infrastructure.” The document also noted that the institutions would “drive breakthroughs” in “climate, agriculture, energy, public health, education, and cybersecurity.”
In a separate announcement, the government stated that AI development companies, including Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, NVIDIA, Hugging Face, and Stability AI, will also participate in August's public evaluation of AI systems on a platform from AI training firm Scale AI at the DEFCON hacker convention.
In the summer, the White House will make available for public comment a draft policy on how the U.S. government will use artificial intelligence.
The development, use, and procurement of artificial intelligence by federal departments and agencies will be governed by policies. It was stated that the guidelines would serve as a model for state and local administrations' procurement and use of artificial intelligence.