Namaste Yogis. Welcome to the Blockchain & AI Forum, where your blockchain and artificial intelligence technology questions are answered, mostly correct! Here no question is too mundane. As a bonus, a proverb is also included. Today’s question, submitted by Marcel from Florida, is: did President Biden issue an executive order on artificial intelligence (AI)?
Marcel, you came to the right place. Yes, President Biden did issue a lengthy executive order (EO) regarding AI. I’ll hit the high points only. The official name is the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. The EO says “… the policy is to advance and govern the development and use of AI in accordance with the following eight guiding principles and priorities.”
1. Artificial intelligence must be safe and secure. Biden wants to develop labeling and content provenance mechanisms, so that Americans can determine when content is generated using AI. Sounds analogous to food labels for AI?
2. Promote responsible innovation, competition, and collaboration. Biden proposes to give small AI firms opportunities and limit the power of the big tech firms. Well… call me skeptical, but campaign contributions often get in the way of good intentions.
3. A commitment to workers. Biden offers to revise existing job training programs for AI and says AI should not undermine rights, worsen job quality, encourage undue worker surveillance, lessen market competition, introduce new health and safety risks, or cause harmful labor-force disruptions.
4. Artificial intelligence policies must advance equity and civil rights. Biden’s EO proposes to issue an AI Bill of Rights, however, offers no clue what it might say or when it would be proposed. Nevertheless, a fascinating idea. (Will be tough to improve on James Madison’s work!) I suggest owning your own data rather than it being monetized by mega-tech firms as the first right!
5. Enforce existing consumer protection laws. Good! Discrimination should be illegal whether by a person or by a computer programmed by a person.
6. Protect Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. As Edward Snowden demonstrated, I don’t believe this, but we can hope.
7. Increase the Government’s ability to use AI in daily operations. This reminds me of Vice President Gore’s “reinventing government” initiative. With Gore at the command, government workers adopted wide-spread use of the web and the feds gave generous grants to encourage cities to do likewise. Gore once famously said, “I invented the internet” and of course he did not. He simply ordered all government workers to use the internet! Ha ha.
8. The US should lead the way to global societal, economic, and technological progress. What else would you expect a US President to say.
The “O” in EO stands for order and to no one’s surprise Biden orders a series of actions across the sprawling federal bureaucracy. A significant percentage are related to national security, but also includes ordering the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop guidelines with the aim of promoting consensus industry standards. There are also countless orders related to finance, public health, establishing advisory committees, inter-agency working groups, partnerships with universities and private sector, expediting visas for skilled AI workers, regional innovation clusters for small business, and AI in law enforcement. Essentially, Biden ordered most government agencies to bust a move!
Pushing the federal bureaucracy forward is a Herculean task. But as they say in Hungry, “it’s easy to push a cart being pulled by 12 oxen.”
Marcel, I hope I answered all your questions. Until next time.
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