VP Harris meets with CEOs over AI risks
Google, Microsoft, and others discuss the technology
WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris met on Thursday with the heads of Google, Microsoft, and two other companies developing artificial intelligence as the Biden administration rolls out initiatives meant to ensure the rapidly evolving technology improves lives without putting people’s rights and safety at risk.
The release late last year of popular AI chatbot ChatGPT has sparked a surge of commercial investment in AI tools that can write convincingly human-like text and churn out new images, music, and computer code.
But the ease with which it can mimic humans has also propelled governments around the world to consider how it could take away jobs, trick people, and spread disinformation.
The Democratic administration announced an investment of $140 million to establish seven new AI research institutes.
The Thursday meeting was designed for Harris and administration officials to discuss the risks they see in current AI development with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and the heads of two influential startups: Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google-backed Anthropic. The government leaders’ message to the companies is that they have a role to play in reducing the risks and that they can work together with the government.
Harris said in a statement after the closed-door meeting that she told the executives that “the private sector has an ethical, moral, and legal responsibility to ensure the safety and security of their products.”
Authorities in the United Kingdom also said Thursday they are looking at the risks associated with AI. Britain’s competition watchdog said it’s opening a review of the AI market, focusing on the technology underpinning chatbots like ChatGPT, which was developed by OpenAI.
President Biden noted last month that AI can help to address disease and climate change but also could harm national security and disrupt the economy in destabilizing ways. Biden also stopped by the event Thursday. “The president has been extensively briefed on ChatGPT and knows how it works,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at Thursday’s news briefing.
A flurry of new “generative AI,” such as chatbots and image-generators, has added to ethical and societal concerns about automated systems.
Some of the companies, including OpenAI, have been secretive about the data their AI systems have been trained upon.