On Friday, the White House will convene a summit with the top seven AI companies to secure a series of voluntary commitments aimed at safeguarding users. The companies participating in this initiative include Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI. These commitments, as requested by the White House, encompass areas such as cybersecurity investments, discrimination research, and the implementation of a new watermarking system to indicate AI-generated content to users.
While the companies have voluntarily entered into these agreements, there are currently no penalties for non-compliance. Although most of the commitments are not expected to be immediately rolled out on Friday, the companies are anticipated to begin working on their implementation right away.
A White House official stated that the Biden administration is in the process of developing an executive order to address AI-related risks, although specific details were not disclosed. This order could encompass actions across various federal agencies and departments.
In recent months, the Biden administration has held meetings with tech executives, labor representatives, and civil rights leaders to discuss AI-related issues. In May, the White House announced increased funding and policy guidance for AI tech development, including allocating $140 million to the National Science Foundation for establishing seven new National AI Research (NAIR) Institutes. Furthermore, companies like Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and others agreed to allow public evaluation of their language models at the Def Con event.
This announcement from the White House follows Senator Chuck Schumer’s plan, known as the SAFE (Security, Accountability, Foundations, Explain) Framework, introduced a month prior, which seeks to regulate AI without hindering innovation. Schumer’s plan doesn’t provide specific policy requests but encourages bipartisan collaboration to create rules addressing AI’s potential risks related to national security, job loss, and misinformation.
The White House summit will see representatives from all seven companies gathering for a physical signing of these commitments. However, the exact time of the event has not been disclosed by the White House.