Bing | Maria Diaz/ZDNET
Spurred by recent rapid artificial intelligence advancements, the US government is looking for ways to mitigate any potential security, social, and economic risks to the American society.
With that goal in mind, Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior officials will meet today with the CEOs of major AI development companies, including OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Anthropic AI.
The main purpose of the meeting is to highlight the importance of developing responsible AI systems that can also be trustworthy and serve the public good, while incorporating effective protections against potential risks and harm to individuals.
The Biden administration has a record of seeking to support and regulate the development of generative AI systems. It recently invited public input in order to help develop policies that ensure its development and use align with the AI developers’ responsibilities to create safe technology that improves people’s lives.
This meeting is part of that effort, as well as one to engage with companies, researchers, organizations, communities, and others to discuss and mitigate risks on other AI matters.
Evaluating existing generative AI tools
The announcement from the White House Briefing Room also included plans to perform independent, public assessments of some of the most innovative generative AI systems. This will include an evaluation of tools developed by OpenAI, Google, Hugging Face, Microsoft, Anthropic, NVIDIA, and Stability.ai.
The assessments of these models will take place at the AI Village at DEF CON 31, on an evaluation platform developed by Scale AI, and will be done by thousands of independent community partners and AI experts. The AI Village is an independent community of data scientists, hackers, and researchers that focus on the use and abuse of AI.
The goal of this evaluation is to ensure these AI models adhere to the practices outlined in the administration’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and AI Risk Management Framework; and to assess information regarding the impact these models have on the public and allow the AI companies that developed them to fix inconsistencies that may be found.
Other announcements regarding AI use
The National Science Foundation also reported new funding of $140 million to launch seven new National AI Research Institutes that will go towards AI research and development (R&D). These Institutes join 18 others nationwide and will be created to power breakthroughs in climate, energy, agriculture, public health, and more.
The White House also announced that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will release draft policy guidance created to ensure federal departments and agencies are developing and using AI systems while protecting the safety and rights of the American people.
The OMB hopes this will serve as a model for other agencies, like state and local governments, and businesses.
