Will The White House’s Executive Order Revolutionize AI Safety And Rights?

President Biden has lead the charge with the US debuting an AI executive order. With a mandate on safety checks, civil rights guidance and labor market impact studies, what’s it mean for the AI world?

In the United States' first move of its sort, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order mandating new safety assessments, fairness and civil rights recommendations and study on AI's influence on the labour market.

The executive order mentioned that they are prepared to apply current law to abuses of AI technology. A senior administration official told reporters on a teleconference on Sunday that, like all executive orders, this one "has the force of law." 

The order represents “the strongest set of actions any government in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security, and trust,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed said in a statement.

This is the first legally obligatory government action on artificial intelligence and it builds on prior voluntary commitments the White House gained from top AI businesses. It also occurs just before the United Kingdom hosts a summit on AI safety, starting on 1^st of November.

“The President, several months ago, directed his team to pull every lever and that’s what this order does: bringing the power of the federal government to bear in a wide range of areas to manage AI’s risk and harness its benefits,” an official said.

“This executive order represents bold action, but we still need Congress to act,” Biden said.

 

What Are The Key Components Of The Executive Order?

 

• 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 programme that can make AI tools that help identify flaws in critical software.

• Privacy protection for consumers, including the development of standards by which government organisations may judge the efficacy of artificial intelligence (AI) privacy tools.

• Developing best practises on the appropriate role of AI in the justice system, including when it is used in sentencing, risk assessments and crime forecasting and providing guidance to landlords and federal contractors to help avoid AI algorithms furthering discrimination.

• Protecting consumers by establishing a programme to assess potentially harmful AI-related health-care practises at the Department of Health and Human Services and by developing materials to help teachers make ethical use of AI in the classroom.

• Researching how the federal government may help workers who are impacted by a change in the labour market and publishing a report on the potential labour market implications of AI are both approaches to support workers.

• Boosting innovation and rivalry by updating the standards for letting highly qualified immigrant workers with critical skills remain in the U.S. and by increasing funding for AI research in areas like climate change.

• Collaborating with other nations to establish AI norms worldwide.

• Developing recommendations for federal agencies' usage and acquisition of AI and speeding up the government's hiring of workers competent in the subject.

According to an administration official, President Joe Biden's executive order mandates the creation of guidelines for "investigating and prosecuting civil rights violations related to AI" by the Department of Justice and other government agencies.

A government official said, "To prevent artificial intelligence algorithms from being used to exacerbate discrimination, clear guidance must be provided to landlords, federal benefit programmes and federal contractors in accordance with the President's executive order."

If you want more information, check out this press release by the White House.


As Biden introduces the first-ever AI executive order demanding safety checks, civil rights guidance and labor market studies, will it change the game in the AI era?

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