Biden tightens AI regulations as critics warn of ‘stifling’ red tape on companies

WASHINGTON – President Biden issued a sweeping executive order Monday regulating the development of artificial intelligence – after Elon Musk, Sam Altman and other industry leaders have warned the technology’s unsupervised advancement could pose a risk to humanity.

Under the first-of-its-kind action, companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft-backed OpenAI will be required to share safety test results with the government whenever they train an AI model that poses a potential “serious risk to national security, national economic security, or national public health and safety.”

 “President Biden is rolling out the strongest set of actions any government in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security, and trust,” White House Deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed said in a statement.

“It’s the next step in an aggressive strategy to do everything on all fronts to harness the benefits of AI and mitigate the risks,” he added.

Critics of the regulatory push argue that Big Tech leaders are taking advantage of public fears to push for rules that will effectively fence out competition within the burgeoning industry.

Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of NetChoice, called the executive order “the wrong approach to govern AI” and “dangerous for our global standing as the leading technological innovators.”

NetChoice is a coalition of trade associations, eCommerce businesses such as Amazon and Google, and online consumers, “all of whom share the goal of promoting convenience, choice, and commerce” on the internet, according to its website.

“AI has vast potential to improve peoples’ lives, and we must not allow fears to hold the United States back,” the site also states.

“Broad regulatory measures in Biden’s AI red tape wishlist will result in stifling new companies and competitors from entering the marketplace and significantly expanding the power of the federal government over American innovation,” Szabo said. “Thus, this order puts any investment in AI at risk of being shut down at the whims of government bureaucrats.”

“There are many regulations that already govern AI,” he added. “Instead of examining how these existing rules can be applied to address modern challenges, Biden has chosen to further increase the complexity and burden of the federal code.”

WIth Post wires