The White House announced Friday that seven of America’s largest AI companies have agreed to voluntary safeguards against technological development, pledging to ensure safety, security and reliability while competing for artificial intelligence potential.
Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI will meet with President Biden at the White House on Friday afternoon to formally announce their commitment to the new standard.
The announcement comes amid a race between the two companies on versions of AI that offer powerful new tools for creating text, photos, music and videos without human input. But leaps in technology have raised fears that the tool will facilitate the spread of disinformation and issue dire warnings about “endangered” as self-aware computers evolve.
Facebook parent company Meta announced Wednesday that it will unveil its own AI tool called Llama 2 and release the underlying code to the public. Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of international affairs, said in a statement that the company supports the safeguards put in place by the White House.
“We are delighted to be working with other companies in this space on this initiative,” Clegg said. “These are important first steps to ensure we establish responsible guardrails for AI and create a model for other governments to follow.”
The voluntary safeguards announced on Friday are just the first steps in Washington and governments around the world putting legal and regulatory frameworks in place for the development of artificial intelligence. White House officials said the administration is working on an executive order that goes further than Friday’s announcement and is helping develop a bipartisan bill.
“Companies developing these emerging technologies have a responsibility to ensure the safety of their products,” the administration said in a statement announcing the deal. The statement said companies “must adhere to the highest standards so that innovation does not compromise the rights and safety of Americans.”
As part of the agreement, the companies agreed to:
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Security testing of AI products. Some are done by independent experts who share information about their products with governments and others seeking to manage technology risks.
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Ensure that consumers can identify AI-generated content by implementing watermarks or other means of identifying generated content.
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Regularly and publicly report system capabilities and limitations, including evidence of security risks and biases.
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Deploy advanced artificial intelligence tools to tackle society’s greatest challenges, such as treating cancer or fighting climate change.
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Conducted research on the risks of prejudice, discrimination, and invasion of privacy due to the spread of AI tools.
“AI’s track record shows the insidiousness and prevalence of these hazards, and companies are committed to deploying AI to mitigate them,” the Biden administration said Friday ahead of the meeting.
The deal is unlikely to delay efforts to pass legislation and impose regulations on emerging technologies. Lawmakers in Washington are scrambling to keep up with rapid advances in artificial intelligence. And other governments are doing the same.
The European Union acted swiftly last month in what it considers the broadest effort to regulate the technology. A bill proposed by the European Parliament would place strict limits on some uses of AI, such as facial recognition, and would require companies to disclose more data about their products.
