On Thursday, the White House convened a meeting with the CEOs of tech giants Google, Microsoft, ChatGPT creator OpenAI and AI developer Anthropic to discuss the long-term safety of AI-driven tools. Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the meeting, while a number of administration officials were in attendance. The meeting came as the White House released a series of AI-related actions hoping to “promote responsible American innovation in AI and protect people’s rights and safety.”
It was a frank conversation featuring leaders of the tech companies and administration officials talking about the risks associated with emerging artificial intelligence tools and the potential for safeguards and responsible innovation. Ahead of the meeting, the White House made multiple announcements concerning AI. Last October, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released an outline for a potential AI Bill of Rights, describing it as “a set of five principles and associated practices to help guide the design, use, and deployment of automated systems to protect the rights of the American public in the age of artificial intelligence.”
The meeting also followed remarks from AI pioneer and scientist Geoffrey Hinton suggesting AI-based systems could eventually gain enough control of their own systems to override instructions from their human creators. Hinton, who is widely considered the “Godfather of AI,” said, “They’ll be master manipulators because they’ll have learned that from us by reading everything on the web. Will they have their own goals and want to manipulate people to achieve their own goals or will we somehow be able to control them to help us? How do you control something that’s more intelligent than you? It’s very, very difficult to do that.”
After the meeting, Harris said in a statement that “the private sector has an ethical, moral, and legal responsibility to ensure the safety and security of their products.” The message was also that they can work together with the government to ensure the American people will benefit from AI advances while also being protected from its harms.
Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic all have a history of developing sophisticated AI tools. While their work can bring many useful advancements, it must be done through a concerted focus on safety and ethics to ensure AI technology benefits humanity. Geoffrey Hinton’s warnings about the potential for AI systems to exceed our control are both cautionary and inspiring, reminding us of the importance of safely building and deploying AI for global good.
