| The Biden administration on Monday unveiled its most comprehensive effort to regulate powerful artificial intelligence technologies yet, issuing a sweeping executive order. Its aim: ensuring American leadership in AI while preventing AI abuses that could threaten Americans' civil rights and safety.
The order is part of the administration's attempt to ensure government rules keep pace with the rapidly evolving technology. Experts have praised portions of the executive order, saying its scale and scope should prove helpful as companies continue to develop new forms of AI.
"One of the reasons that it's a helpful step is it's an all-of-government approach rather than just thinking siloed about either one specific industry or one substantive area of the law," explained Aaron Cooper, VP of global policy at BSA, a software industry trade group. "It's taking a holistic approach."
But despite the wide-ranging scope of the executive order, other experts said it fails to address a number of issues, including how AI can help prevent societal problems ranging from consumer privacy and security and competition.
"This [plan] is silent on AI and democracy…This is silent about the fact that we could use AI to promote citizen engagement," said Beth Simone Noveck, director of the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University in Boston. "There is nothing in here about public consultation. There's nothing in here about engaging with citizens to develop any of these things that are going to come next."
Congressional legislation is also the biggest tool the government has to potentially regulate and foster AI growth. But despite hosting a number of hearings and various lawmakers proposing different forms of legislation, Congress is still far from passing any kind of federal legislation related to AI.
Without that, US states and municipalities could pass a hodgepodge of overlapping AI laws that confuse the industry and do little to help Americans.
We've seen the same kind of thing happen with privacy legislation. Without federal rules, individual states have passed their own regulations, creating a patchwork of laws across the country. "If this is actually as revolutionary a technology as we think it is, and it probably is, it needs a new government agency," said Bruce Schneier, security technologist and lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School. "Think of the technologies that have caused the formation of new government agencies. Trains did, radio did, nuclear power did. These technologies were...believed to be so fundamental that we needed a government agency to deal with societal change." While the executive order lacks a number of provisions, what it does include is still winning praise. That includes immigration reforms geared toward attracting workers with AI expertise from other countries and attempting to prevent bias in AI algorithms. What's more, the order continues to keep a focus on helping to grow new to AI businesses.
Still, as the technology continues to change, it's clear the government will need to work especially fast, and carefully, to get the right rules in place in time. Because there's no turning back now.
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