The White House on Thursday urged Silicon Valley chief executives to limit the risks of artificial intelligence, the most visible effort by the administration to address mounting concerns and calls to regulate the rapidly advancing technology.
For more than an hour so far in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris and other officials told Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, the maker of the popular ChatGPT chatbot and the leader of artificial intelligence startup Anthropic that they There is a responsibility to seriously consider concerns about the technology. President Biden also briefly attended the meeting, the administration said.
It was the first White House gathering of major AI chief executives since the release of tools like ChatGPT that captivated the public and fueled the race to dominate the technology.
“The private sector has a moral, moral and legal responsibility to ensure the safety and security of its products,” Ms Harris said in a statement. “Every company must abide by existing laws to protect the American people.”
The meeting, which is still taking place, marks how the AI boom has roiled the highest levels of the U.S. government and put pressure on governments around the world to master the technology. Since OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public last year, many of the world’s largest technology companies have rushed to integrate chatbots into their products and accelerate AI research. Venture capitalists have poured billions of dollars into AI startups.
But the explosion of artificial intelligence has also raised concerns about how the technology could transform economies, destabilize geopolitics and fuel crime. Critics worry that powerful AI systems will be too opaque, potentially discriminating, displacing people’s jobs, spreading disinformation, and possibly breaking the law themselves.
Even some AI makers have sounded warnings about the technology’s consequences. This week, Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneering researcher known as the “godfather” of artificial intelligence, resigned from Google to speak publicly about the risks posed by the technology.
Mr. Biden recently said Whether artificial intelligence is dangerous “remains to be seen”, and some of his senior appointees have pledged to intervene if the technology is used in harmful ways. Congressman, including senator chuck schumer Majority leader New York state government has also begun drafting or proposing legislation to regulate artificial intelligence
The pressure to regulate the technology is being felt in many parts of the world. EU lawmakers are negotiating AI rules and are under pressure to cover chatbots such as ChatGPT. In China, authorities recently required AI systems to abide by strict censorship rules.
“Europe is certainly not going to sit idly by, and neither is China,” said Tom Wheeler, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. “Having a first-mover advantage in policy is like having a first-mover advantage in the market.”
Mr Wheeler said all eyes were on the possible actions of the US. “We need to make sure we are at the table as players,” he said. “Everyone’s first reaction was, ‘What is the White House going to do?'”
Attendees at Thursday’s meeting included Google CEO Sundar Pichai; Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella; OpenAI’s Sam Altman; and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.
Google, Microsoft and OpenAI declined to comment ahead of the White House meeting. Anthropic confirmed that the company will be participating.
“The president has extensive knowledge of ChatGPT and how it works,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a Thursday briefing.
Hours before the meeting, the White House announced that the National Science Foundation plans to spend $140 million on a new research center dedicated to artificial intelligence. rights and security,” adding that several AI companies had agreed to offer their products for review at a cybersecurity conference in August.
The White House said ahead of the meeting that it wanted to let the companies know they should deal with the risks of new AI developments.
“Our goal is to have a candid discussion about the risks we each see in current and near-term AI developments, actions to mitigate those risks, and other ways we can work together to ensure that the American people benefit from advances in AI while being protected harm,” Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in an invitation to the meeting obtained by The New York Times.
Meeting and announcement builds on earlier government efforts to put guardrails on artificial intelligence
Last year, the White House released a blueprint for a so-called AI Bill of Rights, which says automated systems should protect the privacy of users’ data, protect them from discriminatory outcomes, and spell out why certain actions are taken. In January, the Commerce Department also released a framework for reducing risks in AI development, which has been years in the making.
But concrete steps to rein in the technology in the country may be more likely to come first from law enforcement in Washington.
A group of government agencies pledged in April to “oversee the development and use of automated systems and promote responsible innovation,” while punishing violations of the technology’s use.
The U.S. is at a “critical decision point” in artificial intelligence, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan said in a guest article in The Times on Wednesday, likening the latest developments in the technology to Google and Facebook Such as the birth of tech giants, she warned that without proper regulation, the technology could consolidate the power of the largest tech companies and provide a powerful tool for scammers.
“As the use of artificial intelligence becomes more widespread, public officials have a responsibility to ensure that this hard-won history is not repeated,” she said.
katie rogers Contribution report.
