White House Requests AI Companies to Implement Safeguards

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI, prominent players in the US artificial intelligence sector, are expected to pledge their commitment to specific safeguards for their technology on Friday. This move comes in response to a request from the White House. While the companies will voluntarily agree to adhere to a set of principles, the agreement will remain in effect until Congress enacts legislation to regulate AI.

The Biden administration is focused on ensuring that AI companies develop the technology responsibly. Officials want to ensure that tech companies can innovate in generative AI in a way that benefits society without negatively impacting the public’s safety, rights and democratic values.

In May, Vice President Kamala Harris met with the CEOs of OpenAI, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Anthropic and told them that they have a responsibility to ensure that their AI products are secure. Last month, President Joe Biden met with industry leaders to discuss AI issues.

According to a draft document reviewed by Bloomberg, the tech companies agreed on eight proposed safety, security and social responsibility measures. They include:

• Let independent experts test models for bad behavior
• Investing in cybersecurity
• We encourage third parties to find security holes
• Disclosure of societal risks, including bias and inappropriate use
• We focus on researching the social risks of artificial intelligence
• Sharing trust and security information with other companies and the government
• Watermarking audio and visual content makes it clear that the content is created by artificial intelligence
• Using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence systems, known as frontier models, to solve society’s biggest problems

The fact that this is a voluntary agreement highlights the difficulty lawmakers are having to keep pace with AI developments. Several bills have been introduced in Congress in hopes of regulating artificial intelligence. One seeks to prevent companies from using Section 230 protections to avoid liability for harmful AI-generated content, while the other seeks to require political ads to include disclosures when generative AI is used. Notably, House administrators have reportedly placed restrictions on the use of generative AI in congressional offices.