The president of the United States, Joe Biden, used this Monday an old wartime law – specifically, that of Korea (1950-1953) – to sign a decree that seeks to mitigate the risks of uncontrolled development of intelligence Generative artificial intelligence (AI), a technology that promises to profoundly change the way we live, and poses enormous challenges for the future of humanity. “Technology must be governed, there can be no discussion,” Biden defended in a speech in the East Wing of the White House. The emergency rule, the president recalled, is used in exceptional cases, such as the recruitment of troops, or to mobilize resources during the pandemic. With the new decree, the United States becomes the first country to regulate the issue.
“We are going to see more profound technological changes in the next five years than in the last 50. And in that revolution, the most important technology of our time is artificial intelligence, which is accelerating the changes. To a large extent, it is improving our lives, it will help us explore the universe, predict the weather, end cancer,” he said, “but it is also making them worse: for example, it allows us to use the personal data of adolescents to discover what will keep them glued to their phones, or how to make social media more addictive. “All of which has the potential to cause profound harm to your mental health and well-being.” Biden also recalled that “the deep fakes [reproducciones falsas de la imagen de una persona] They use AI-generated audio and video to defame, spread fake news and commit fraud.”
With this decree, companies dedicated to AI in the United States, whether or not they work with the Government, will be obliged to notify federal authorities of any advance that poses a “serious risk to national security, economic security or public health and safety.” ”, as well as to perfect the mechanisms that reinforce confidence in these technological advances, as stated in a document that the White House distributed before Biden’s appearance. To do this, a new body will be created: the AI Safety Board, dependent on the Department of Homeland Security. The order also promises to protect Americans from the “fraud and deception” that these technologies can bring, with, for example, the alteration of official documents or images, in the communications of the Government and federal agencies, with measures that, they hope, serve as an example to other countries and the private sector.
Biden has taken, according to his collaborators, a special interest in facing the challenges of AI. “I am determined to do everything in my power to promote and demand responsible innovation,” he said Monday. And in Washington efforts are being made to not repeat the mistakes made in the past with social networks. When the urgency in regulating its use was clear, it was too late and the consequences of its uncontrolled use had altered the presidential elections in 2016, contributed to the spread of conspiracy theories during the pandemic, affected the health of adolescents or accentuated the climate of political division in the country.
In May, the Senate organized a hearing on AI, which included the appearance of Sam Altman, founder of Chat GPT, the technology that represented a gigantic step forward a year ago and was placed at the center of the public debate. In September, some of the most powerful men in Silicon Valley, from the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, to Meta (Facebook), Mark Zuckerberg, to the leader of Alphabet (Google) Sundar Pichai, and the founder of Microsoft Bill Gates, responded to the call of the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, present at the White House this Monday, to discuss a future of intelligent machines.
Bipartisan agreement
“We still need Congress to act [más allá del decreto recién firmado]“warned the president. “We are at an inflection point. We need a bipartisan agreement to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data from our children and teens online. Or to prohibit advertising aimed at children or limit the information they collect and store about us.”
The defense of consumers against deceptions derived from AI, and the protection of privacy, equality and civil rights are other priorities of the new decree. “Irresponsible uses of AI can provoke and deepen discrimination, bias, and other abuses in the administration of justice, as well as in health care and housing,” the White House document reads. To achieve this, the Biden Administration will train, among others, Justice Department officials and the police in the correct use of AI.
The order focuses on another of the great challenges: the future of work. Identify its promises (greater productivity) and its risks (more surveillance, more prejudices and, above all, the redundancy of certain jobs). As solutions, the Biden Administration proposes strengthening collective bargaining mechanisms and investing in worker training.
To ensure that the United States remains a “leader in innovation,” the order also creates a national AI research institute and entrusts oversight of fair competition in that market to Lina Khan’s Federal Trade Commission, whose work has been characterized for marking big technology companies. The Biden Administration also hopes that the United States will lead the debate on artificial AI in the world, through agreements with other countries.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed called them “the strongest set of actions any government in the world has ever taken on security and trust in AI. “It is the next step in an aggressive strategy to do everything possible on all fronts to realize the benefits of AI and mitigate the risks.” In a statement to the AP, Reed revealed that Biden’s concern grew with the screening during a weekend at the Camp David presidential residence, Mission Impossible. Deadly sentence. Part 1, whose villain is an intelligent and rogue AI called “the Entity” who sinks a submarine and kills its crew in the first minutes of the film.
That step sets the stage for a meeting scheduled for this week in the United Kingdom, in which politicians and businessmen will discuss the future of AI. Organized by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, US Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to speak at the summit, recalling that both she and Biden began to worry about the issue as they took office, “before it became on the topic of the moment.”
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