White House pushes Big Techs for Artificial Intelligence regulation

By Diógenes Freire

On Thursday (4), while meeting with representatives from Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, maker of the popular chatbot ChatGPT, and Anthropic, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup, the Vice President of the United States, Democrat Kamala Harris, said that the companies had a “moral and legal obligation to ensure the safety of their products.”

This was the first meeting since the launch of tools like ChatGPT, which spurred the race to dominate the technology and embrace the market.

“The private sector has an ethical, moral, and legal responsibility to ensure the safety of its products.”

“And every company must comply with existing laws to protect the American people,” Kamala said.

Also present at the meeting, President Joe Biden said that artificial intelligence represents both “enormous potential and enormous danger.”

According to The New York Times, Kamala led the meeting, which was attended briefly by Biden.

After the meeting, the White House said there was “frank and constructive discussion” about the companies’ desire to be more open about their products.

“Given the role these CEOs and their companies play in America’s AI innovation ecosystem, government officials also emphasized the importance of their leadership, urging them to model responsible behavior and take steps to ensure responsible innovation and appropriate safeguards and to protect people’s rights and safety,” the statement said.

The companies also reportedly agreed to make their products available for review during a cybersecurity conference in August of this year.

Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, and OpenAI left the meeting without speaking to the press.

Before the meeting, the White House announced that the National Science Foundation plans to spend US$140 million on research centers dedicated to AI.

REGULATION

Following the boom in artificial intelligence, pressure to regulate the technology has also exploded.

In the European Union, lawmakers are still moving forward with the discussion without much clarity on how regulation would take place.

China has established that AI systems must follow strict censorship rules.

“Europe is certainly not standing still, and neither is China.”

“There is a pioneering advantage in politics as much as there is a pioneering advantage in the marketplace.”

“We need to ensure we are at the table as players.”

“Everyone’s first reaction is, ‘What is the White House going to do?'” said the former US Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler.

BRAZIL

On Thursday (4), the president of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), presented a bill to regulate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Brazil.

The bill was presented after the jurists’ commission delivered, on December 6 last year, the final report on the proposal.

According to the proposal, the Executive Branch will be responsible, among other duties, for “inspecting and applying sanctions, in case of development or use of artificial intelligence systems performed in non-compliance with the legislation” and “entering into, at any time, commitments with artificial intelligence agents to eliminate irregularities, legal uncertainties or situations.”

The text also provides a warning and a fine of R$50 million (US$10 million) in case of non-compliance with the law or an amount corresponding to 2% of revenues in the case of lawsuits against companies.