US to implement new requirement for AI companies

The White House AI Council is scheduled to meet Monday to review progress made on the executive order that President Joe Biden signed three months back to manage the fast-evolving technology

The Biden administration will start implementing a new requirement for the developers of major artificial intelligence systems to reveal their safety test results to the government.

The White House AI Council is scheduled to meet Monday to review progress made on the executive order that President Joe Biden signed three months back to manage the fast-evolving technology.

Chief among the 90-day goals from the order was a mandate under the Defense Production Act that AI firms share vital information with the Commerce Department, including safety tests.

Ben Buchanan, the White House special adviser on AI, said in an interview that the government wants “to know AI systems are safe before they are released to the public — the president has been very clear that companies need to meet that bar.”

The software firms are committed to a set of categories for the safety tests, but firms do not yet have to adhere to a common standard on the tests. The government’s NIST will develop a uniform framework for evaluating safety, as part of the order Biden signed in October.

AI has emerged as a leading economic and national security consideration for the federal government, given the investments and uncertainties caused by the launch of new AI tools like ChatGPT that can generate text, images and sounds. The Biden administration also is looking at congressional legislation and working with other countries and the EU on rules for managing the technology.

The Commerce Department has developed a draft rule on U.S. cloud firms that provide servers to foreign AI developers.

The government also has scaled up the hiring of AI experts and data scientists at federal agencies.

We know that artificial intelligence has transformative effects and potential, Buchanan said. We are not trying to upend the apple cart there, but we are trying to make sure the regulators are prepared to manage this technology.

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