Biden signs executive order on AI safeguards

• US President Joe Biden has signed an executive order to ensure that the country leads the way in seizing the promise and managing the risks of artificial intelligence. 

• The term ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) means a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations or decisions influencing real or virtual environments.

• AI is expected to change the way we work and live. In view of its positive impact on the economy, the technology is being embraced by countries across the world. Its proliferation is being regarded as the fourth industrial revolution.

• The executive order establishes new standards for AI safety and security, protects privacy, advances equity and civil rights, stands up for consumers and workers, promotes innovation and competition, and more.

• Governments across the globe have been racing to establish AI protections, some of them tougher than the new US directives.

• The G7 leaders have agreed on International Guiding Principles on AI and a voluntary Code of Conduct for AI developers under the Hiroshima AI process.

The executive order signed by Biden aims to:

i) Develop standards, tools, and tests to help ensure that AI systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy. 

ii) Protect against the risks of using AI to engineer dangerous biological materials by developing strong new standards for biological synthesis screening.

iii) Protect Americans from AI-enabled fraud and deception by establishing standards and best practices for detecting AI-generated content and authenticating official content.

iv) Establish an advanced cybersecurity program to develop AI tools to find and fix vulnerabilities in critical software.

The Biden administration is establishing the United States AI Safety Institute (US AISI) inside National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The US AISI will operationalise NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework by creating guidelines, tools, benchmarks, and best practices for evaluating and mitigating dangerous capabilities and conducting evaluations including red-teaming to identify and mitigate AI risk.

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