We’ve seen it play out time and again. Industries that lack sufficient government oversight prioritize short-term profits over long-term sustainability and can cause significant harm to the economy, society and the environment. Consider social media, Big Oil and real estate.
We’re now staring down the barrel of the next industry in dire need of stronger government guardrails: generative artificial intelligence, or GenAI.
Over the past year and a half, federal agencies, among many others, have used GenAI models such as ChatGPT to generate text, images, audio and video, making GenAI a priority concern for the U.S. government. And while we may assume President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are at opposite ends of the political spectrum on this issue, as they are on practically every issue, their approach to AI has actually been very similar. They have pampered AI developers with significant funding and deregulation, giving them global leverage, credit and visibility.
Last July, the Biden administration announced the securing of voluntary commitments from seven AI companies under the guise of underscoring “safety, security and trust.” But in reality, these so-called commitments were more like gifts because their scope is limited to GenAI tools that are overall more powerful than existing ones. The commitments require public reporting of capabilities, limitations, areas of appropriate/inappropriate use, societal risks, effects on fairness and bias, but only for more powerful AI models, thus offering a carte blanche for existing models.
