White House & AI companies to sign voluntary commitments to safe development

With the boom of AI technology and implementation into a variety of apps and services this year, a major concern inside and outside of tech is safety and security regarding AI technology. It’s a concern that extends all the way up to the White House in the United States, where President Joe Biden has announced plans to meet with major AI tech companies to secure voluntary commitments to safe, secure, and sensible development of AI.

President Biden’s Administration announced its plans for this meeting of AI tech companies in a White House press release on July 21, 2023. Biden’s administration is meeting with tech company representatives from seven major firms, including Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI, all of which have been hugely involved in the current AI tech boom. The Biden Administration is securing voluntary commitments from these companies that their advancement of AI technology will proceed in a safe, secure, and trustworthy manner which does not endanger the public at large or consumer data.

OpenAI was among the AI-focused tech companies that are convening with President Joe Biden to commit to safe and secure AI technology development.
Source: OpenAI

The three key points of Biden’s request for commitments from the major tech companies are laid out as follows:

Safety: Companies have a duty to make sure their products are safe before introducing them to the public. That means testing the safety and capabilities of their AI systems, subjecting them to external testing, assessing their potential biological, cybersecurity, and societal risks, and making the results of those assessments public.

Security: Companies have a duty to build systems that put security first. That means safeguarding their models against cyber and insider threats and sharing best practices and standards to prevent misuse, reduce risks to society, and protect national security.

Trust: Companies have a duty to do right by the public and earn the people’s trust. That means making it easy for users to tell whether audio and visual content is in its original form or has been altered or generated by AI. It means ensuring that the technology does not promote bias and discrimination, strengthening privacy protections, and shielding children from harm. Finally, it means using AI to help meet society’s greatest challenges, from cancer to climate change, and managing AI’s risks so that its benefits can be fully realized.

For its part, OpenAI has already released a statement of adherence to the commitment asked for by the White House and laid out its terms for proceeding with safe AI development. With many critics, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, sharing concerns about the breakneck pace at which AI advancement is moving, there have been suggestions that it be slowed down or altogether temporarily stopped to ensure proper safeguards are in place. It will be interesting to see how the other mentioned tech companies proceed under this commitment to the White House. Stay tuned as we follow for further info.