The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology is an exciting prospect, but it also comes with a set of challenges and risks that must be addressed. Legislation has been emerging that dictates how governments and corporations use AI, and the protections they must put in place to ensure the technology is safe and equitable for all users.
President Joe Biden recently issued a new executive order on artificial intelligence (AI), marking the US government’s first action of its kind. The Executive Order establishes new standards for AI safety and security, protects Americans’ privacy, advances equity and civil rights, stands up for consumers and workers, promotes innovation and competition, advances American leadership around the world, and more.
The White House breaks the key components of the executive order into eight parts:
- Creating new safety and security standards for AI, including by requiring some AI companies to share safety test results with the federal government, directing the Commerce Department to create guidance for AI watermarking, and creating a cybersecurity program that can make AI tools that help identify flaws in critical software.
- Protecting consumer privacy, including by creating guidelines that agencies can use to evaluate privacy techniques used in AI.
- Advancing equity and civil rights by providing guidance to landlords and federal contractors to help avoid AI algorithms furthering discrimination and creating best practices on the appropriate role of AI in the justice system, including when it’s used in sentencing, risk assessments, and crime forecasting.
- Protecting consumers overall by directing the Department of Health and Human Services to create a program to evaluate potentially harmful AI-related healthcare practices and creating resources on how educators can responsibly use AI tools.
- Supporting workers by producing a report on the potential labor market implications of AI and studying the ways the federal government could support workers affected by a disruption to the labor market.
- Promoting innovation and competition by expanding grants for AI research in areas such as climate change and modernizing the criteria for highly skilled immigrant workers with key expertise to stay in the U.S.
- Working with international partners to implement AI standards around the world.
- Developing guidance for federal agencies’ use and procurement of AI and speeding up the government’s hiring of workers skilled in the field.
For more on the Biden-Harris Administration’s work to advance AI, and for opportunities to join the Federal AI workforce, visit AI.gov
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