WASHINGTON (Michigan News Source) – Last week President Joe Biden signed an executive order on the “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development of the Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)” amidst the rise in AI throughout society. 

“AI is all around us,” President Biden remarked at the unveiling, “Much of it is making our lives better.” 

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He also noted how the use of AI can also have adverse effects on society. 

“In some cases it is making lives worse, for example using teenagers’ personal data to figure out what will keep them glued to their device,” he said. “AI makes social media more addictive. It’s  causing something our surgeon general calls a ‘profound risk of harm’ to their mental health and wellbeing.” 

According to the White House, the new order encompasses many aspects of AI in research, development, and the workforce. 

“The executive order establishes new standards for AI safety and security, protects Americans’ privacy, advances equity and civil rights, stands up for consumers and workers, promotes innovation and competition, advances American leadership around the world, and more,” according to the White House. 

Strengthening AI Governance, Advancing Responsible AI Innovation, and Managing Risks for the Use of AI are the three main pillars of the executive order according to the White House. 

Additionally, the order would require that developers of the most powerful AI systems share their safety test results and other critical information with the U.S. government; develop standards, tools, and tests to help ensure that AI systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy; protect against the risks of using AI to engineer dangerous biological materials; protect Americans from AI-enabled fraud and deception by establishing standards and best practices for detecting AI-generated content and authenticating official content; establish an advanced cybersecurity program to develop AI tools to find and fix vulnerabilities in critical software according to the White House. 

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Michigan State University Professor Anjana Susarla, Omura-Saxena, Professor of Responsible AI, also weighed in on the discussion of the new executive order, and how it would impact accountability for companies. 

“Another important initiative outlined in the executive order is probing for vulnerabilities of very large-scale general purpose AI models trained on massive amounts of data, such as the models that power OpenAI’s ChatGPT or DALL-E,” said Professor Susarla in a statement. “The order requires companies that build large AI systems with the potential to affect national security, public health or the economy to perform red teaming and report the results to the government. Red teaming is using manual or automated methods to attempt to force an AI model to produce a harmful output, such as making offensive or dangerous statements like explaining how to sell drugs.”

The new executive order is also lacking in a few areas. 

“A key challenge for AI regulation is the absence of comprehensive federal data protection and privacy legislation,” said Susarla in a statement. “The executive order only calls on Congress to adopt privacy legislation, but it does not provide a legislative framework. It remains to be seen how the courts will interpret the executive order’s directives in light of existing consumer privacy and data rights statutes.” 

 “Without strong data privacy laws in the U.S. as other countries have, the executive order could have minimal effect on getting AI companies to boost data privacy,” Susarla added. “In general, it’s difficult to measure the impact that decision-making AI systems have on data privacy and freedoms.”

Additionally, Vice President Kamala Harris also announced the opening of public comment for the Office of Management and Budget (OMD) which has a draft policy for the “Advancing Governance, Innovation, and Risk Management for Agency Use of Artificial Intelligence.”

“This guidance would establish AI governance structures in federal agencies, advance responsible AI innovation, increase transparency, protect federal workers, and manage risks from government uses of AI,” according to the White House.