On Friday, the White House announced that seven leading artificial intelligence companies have agreed to voluntary safeguards on the technology’s development. President Joe Biden and his administration have vowed to manage the new tools as A.I. continues to rise in popularity.
Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI formally committed to new standards for security during a meeting with Biden. All seven companies have been attempting to outdo each other with different versions of A.I. that can create text, photos, music and video completely on their own.
“We must be clear-eyed and vigilant about the threats emerging from emerging technologies that can pose — don’t have to but can pose — to our democracy and our values,” said Biden in a speech.
“This is a serious responsibility; we have to get it right,” he continued. “And there’s enormous, enormous potential upside as well.”
As the power of A.I. continues to increase, the federal government — and the rest of the world — have warned of a “risk of extinction.” The seven companies that attended the meeting on Friday vowed to take steps such as testing products for security and using watermarks to help consumers spot A.I. generated content.
Though aspects of A.I. are frightening and need to be monitored, the U.S. is also working to protect the technologies from other world powers, particularly China. A presidential executive order is expected to be announced within the coming weeks and will involve new restrictions on the export of such models.
While Biden’s standards offer a solid launching point for A.I. companies, many fear that they are not enforceable and are calling on Congress to craft more transparent legislation.
