AI Executive Order

On Monday, President Biden signed an executive order providing rules around generative AI.

The order has eight primary objectives:

1. Create new safety and security standards for AI.
2. Protect consumer privacy.
3. Advance equity and civil rights.
4. Protecting consumers overall.
5. Supporting workers affected by a disruption to the labor market.
6. Promote innovation and competition.
7. Work with international partners to implement AI standards.
8. Developing guidance for effective government use of AI technology.

Several government agencies are tasked with creating standards to protect against the use of AI to engineer biological materials, establish best practices around content authentication, and build advanced cybersecurity programs. Developers of large AI models like OpenAI ‘s GPT and Meta’s Llama 2 are required to share safety test results.

The Biden administration said: “We’re not going recall publicly available models that are out there,”. “Existing models are still subject to the anti-discrimination rules already in place.”

To protect users’ privacy, the White House called on Congress to pass data privacy regulations. The order also seeks federal support for the development of “privacy-preserving” techniques and technologies.

Part of the order plans to prevent the use of AI to discriminate, including addressing algorithmic discrimination and ensuring fairness when utilizing the technology for sentencing, parole, and surveillance. It also orders government agencies to provide guidelines for landlords, Federal benefits programs, and contracts on how to prevent AI from exacerbating discrimination.

The White House also wants to encourage more workers to work in the AI ecosystem and ordered the launch of a National AI Research Resource to provide key information to students and AI researchers and access to technical assistance for small businesses. It also directed the rapid hiring of AI professionals for the government. A senior administration official said, workers with AI expertise can find relevant openings in the federal government on AI.gov.

The Biden administration first released an AI Bill of Rights outlining a set of principles developers of AI models should follow in October of 2022. These principles were later turned into a series of agreements between the White House and several AI players, including Meta, Google, OpenAI, Nvidia, and Adobe.

It’s important to note that an executive order is not a permanent law and generally only lasts for the length of Biden’s administration. Lawmakers are still discussing how to regulate AI, though some politicians said they want to pass laws around AI before the end of the year.

Industry observers said the executive order is a step forward in providing standards around AI.

Special thanks to the Verge and CNBC for information contained in this segment.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/30/23914507/biden-ai-executive-order-regulation-standards

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/30/biden-unveils-us-governments-first-ever-ai-executive-order.html