Biden Administration Finally Maybe Ready To Stop Letting AI Companies Regulate Themselves

The rise in Artificial Intelligence has been a key issue for the past year. Because it’s a largely unregulated industry, AI has been wreaking havoc in creative industries. There have also been numerous cases of identity theft via voice synthesis and deep fakes. Generative AI has made its way into the medical and legal industries, and not with great results. There are various social costs to unregulated AI, and very few states have implemented useful policies to protect people and affected industries against this new technological advancement.

But Biden’s administration is finally maybe to do something about the issue. It only took the WGA Strike and the SAG-AFTRA Strike for him (and possibly, numerous deepfakes of the president himself) to finally issue the Executive Order On Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, and it may (we can hope) be a game changer.

What does this new Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence entail? According to the factsheet released by The White House, the EO intends to secure the privacy of many Americans, advance equity and civil rights, support workers, and set standards for AI safety and security among many other points. These four points of focus are particularly relevant to many recent issues surrounding AI. Many creators and individuals have had their art and images stolen and fed to Generative AI programs like Midjourney and DALL-E, but the White House is currently working with the Department of Justice to improve investigations and the prosecution of civil rights violations related to AI.

The Biden administration also believes that algorithms should not discriminate against the protected status of people, and must be designed equitably. With this, there is hope for representative and factually produced data by automated systems, instead of pre-programmed discriminatorily charged biases. These are just the first steps to regulating the wild west world of AI, which makes the extraction and stealing of personal data easier. The Biden-Harris administration also released the Blueprint for AI Bill of Rights and with any luck (and lots of public pressure, this won’t be just a toothless executive order, but a serious commitment to regulating AI.

(featured image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)