commitment in September, bringing the total to 15 firms.
U.S. government stanceThe White House this week issued a sweeping Executive Order on “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence,” aiming for a balanced approach between unfettered development and stringent oversight.
According to Wired, the order is designed to both promote broader use of AI and keep commercial AI on a tighter leash, with dozens of directives for federal agencies to complete within the next year. These directives cover a range of topics, from national security and immigration to housing and healthcare, and impose new requirements for AI companies to share safety test results with the federal government.
Kevin Roose, a technology reporter for the New York Times, noted that the order seems to have a little bit for everyone, encapsulating the White House’s attempt to walk a middle path in AI governance. Consulting firm EY has provided an extensive analysis.
While not having the permanence of legislation—the next president can simply reverse it, if they like—this is a strategic ploy to put the U.S. view at the center of the high-stakes global race to influence the future of AI governance. According to President Biden, the Executive Order “is the most significant action any government anywhere in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security, and trust.”
Ryan Heath at Axios commented that the “approach is more carrot than stick, but it could be enough to move the U.S. ahead of overseas rivals in the race to regulate AI.” In his Platformer newsletter, Casey Newton applauded the administration. They have “developed enough expertise at the federal level [to] write a wide-ranging but nuanced executive order that should mitigate at least some harms while still leaving room for exploration and entrepreneurship."
The ‘World Cup’ of AI policyIt is not only the U.S. that is taking steps to shape the future of AI. The Center for AI and Digital Policy said recently that last week was the “World Cup” of AI policy. Besides the U.S., the G7 also announced a set of 11 non-binding AI principles, calling on “organizations developing advanced AI systems to commit to the application of the International Code of Conduct.”
Like the U.S. order, the G7 code is designed to foster “safe, secure, and trustworthy AI systems.” As noted by VentureBeat, however, “different jurisdictions may take their own unique approaches to implementing these guiding principles.”
In the grand finale last week, the U.K. AI Safety Summit brought together governments, research experts, civil society groups, and leading AI companies from around the world to discuss the risks of AI and how they can be mitigated. The Summit particularly focused on “frontier AI” models, the most advanced large language models (LLM) with capabilities that come close to or exceed human-level performance in multiple tasks, including those developed by Alphabet, Anthropic, OpenAI, and several other companies.
As reported by The New York Times, an outcome of this conclave is “The Bletchley Declaration,” signed by representatives from 28 countries, including the U.S. and China, which warned of the dangers posed by the most advanced frontier AI systems. Positioned by the UK government as a “world-first agreement” on managing what they see as the riskiest forms of AI, the declaration adds: “We resolve to work together in an inclusive manner to ensure human-centric, trustworthy, and responsible AI.”
However, the agreement did not set any specific policy goals. Nevertheless, David Meyer at Fortune assessed this as a “promising start” for international cooperation on a subject that only emerged as a serious issue in the last year.
Balancing innovation and regulationAs we approach the horizon outlined by experts like Geoffrey Hinton and Shane Legg, it is evident that the stakes in AI development are rising. From the White House to the G7, the EU, United Nations, China, and the UK, regulatory frameworks have
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