President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris conduct an event on the South Lawn of the White House to commemorate the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which can help curb gun violence, on Monday, July 11, 2022.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
The White House announced it could invest $140 million to create seven artificial intelligence research hubs and released latest guidance on AI.
The developments come ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’s meeting with executives from Google’s parent company Alphabet, Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI Thursday.
It’s a part of the Biden administration’s aim to curtail security risks related to AI because the technology rapidly develops and to impress on pioneering corporations that they may also help reduce harm early on. OpenAI is the creator of the widely used AI tool, ChatGPT — bolstered by an investment from Microsoft. Anthropic is one other leading startup.
As AI becomes more ubiquitous, the White House Thursday promised it could release guidelines to be used by government agencies. AI developers are also expected to comply with have their products reviewed on the upcoming DEF CON cybersecurity conference in August.
Funding for the proposed research hubs will come from the National Science Foundation and can bring the full variety of AI research institutes to 25 across the country.
Artificial intelligence has already begun to disrupt on a regular basis life with a deluge of faux images and videos and robot-penned text, prompting concerns starting from national security to misinformation. The influence is being felt in American politics, as well: Republicans last week released an AI-generated video in response to President Joe Biden’s reelection bid.
Biden himself has said “it stays to be seen” if AI is dangerous, adding last month “it may very well be.”
“Tech corporations have a responsibility, in my opinion, to make certain their products are protected before making them public,” the president said ahead of a gathering together with his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in April.
The White House has made addressing AI a priority. Last yr the administration released a “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights” and later outlined the creation of a National AI Research Resource.
In February Biden signed an executive order aimed to stop bias and discrimination within the technologies from their inception.
