White House Supports Public Assessment of ChatGPT and Other Generative AI Systems
The Biden Administration has announced its support for public assessments of generative AI systems like ChatGPT to educate the public about whether these new systems align with the administration’s “bill of rights” for AI aimed at preventing the new technology’s misuse. These assessments will take place at a hacker convention in Las Vegas in August, according to a statement released by the White House.
New National Research Institutes Studying AI
As part of this initiative, the National Science Foundation will spend $140 million to open seven new national research institutes studying AI, expanding the number of institutes to 25 across the country. These institutes will work with institutes of higher education, private companies, and the government to pursue transformative AI advances that are ethical, trustworthy, responsible, and serve the public good. These institutes will focus on critical areas, including climate, agriculture, energy, public health, education, and cybersecurity, according to the White House.
Meeting with CEOs of AI Companies
Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to meet with the CEOs of Alphabet, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI to emphasize their responsibility as they develop AI, and to emphasize the importance of driving responsible, trustworthy, and ethical innovation with safeguards that mitigate risks and potential harms to individuals and our society. This meeting will be closed to the press, according to the statement.
Public Draft of Policy Guidance
The White House’s budget office is also expected to announce on Thursday that it plans to make public a draft of the policy guidance it plans to provide federal agencies regarding the use of AI systems, ensuring that its use “centers on safeguarding the American people’s rights and safety.” The draft will be released this summer, and the White House Office of Management and Budget will open it up for public comment before it is finalized.
Commitment from Leading AI Developers
The White House also confirmed that it has received a commitment “from leading AI developers, including Anthropic, Google, Hugging Face, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI, and Stability AI, to participate in a public evaluation of AI systems, consistent with responsible disclosure principles.” This will allow these models to be evaluated thoroughly by thousands of community partners and AI experts to explore how the models align with the principles and practices outlined in the Biden-Harris Administration’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and AI Risk Management Framework. Testing of AI models will enable AI companies and developers to take steps to fix issues found in those models. This independent exercise will provide critical information to researchers and the public about the impacts of these models.
These are not the first steps the Biden Administration has taken regarding the issue. In February, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that directed federal agencies to “root out bias in their design and use of new technologies, including AI, and to protect the public from algorithmic discrimination,” according to the White House.
