US aims to tackle risk of uncontrolled race to develop AI

theguardian.com:

The White House has announced measures to address the risks of an unchecked race to develop ever more powerful artificial intelligence, as the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, met chief executives at the forefront of the industry’s rapid advances.

In a statement released as Harris prepared to meet the leaders of Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, the US government said firms developing the technology had a “fundamental responsibility to make sure their products are safe before they are deployed or made public”.

Concerns are mounting that if AI is allowed to develop unchecked, its application by private companies could threaten jobs, increase the risk of fraud and infringe data privacy.

The US government said on Thursday it would invest $140m (£111m) in seven new national AI research institutes, to pursue AI advances that are “ethical, trustworthy, responsible and serve the public good”. AI development is dominated by the private sector, with the tech industry producing 32 significant machine-learning models last year, compared with three produced by academia.

Leading AI developers have also agreed to their systems being publicly evaluated at this year’s Defcon 31 cybersecurity conference. Companies that have agreed to participate include OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Stability AI, the British firm behind the image-generation tool Stable Diffusion.

“This independent exercise will provide critical information to researchers and the public about the impacts of these models,” said the White House.

Another policy announced on Thursday involves the president’s Office of Management and Budget releasing draft guidance on the use of AI by the US government.

Last October the White House published a blueprint for