Will Biden's Executive Order For AI Be Enough To Protect Americans' Privacy From New Technologies?

President Joe Biden issued a landmark executive order today related to the rise of artificial intelligence technologies.

The administration was working with 15 companies in the AI space in an effort to drive “safe, secure and trustworthy development of AI.”

What Happened: AI technologies have burst into the consciousness of the general public following Chat GPT’s meteoric rise earlier this year. On the heels of Chat GPT, hundreds of new AI-powered tools and technologies have popped up, causing some experts to worry that the technology is developing faster than the government can regulate it.

Read Also: Will Biden's Landmark AI Executive Order Push Banking Industry Deeper Into Artificial Intelligence?

In fact, two business leaders in the AI space, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Palantir co-founder Alexander Karp, have already urged Congress to pass regulations related to AI. Biden’s executive AI issued on Monday, appears to be a step in that direction.

What’s In The Executive Order? The executive order established new standards for AI safety and security. The order stated all leading companies in the AI space are required to share safety results and other pertinent information with the U.S. government. This should impede companies from developing technologies that could have detrimental economic consequences for the country. 

The order also mandated the National Institute of Standards to develop new tools and tests to help ensure that AI systems were safe and secure for American users. Other agencies, such as the Departments of Energy and Homeland Security, would also apply new standards to asses various AI systems' potential threat to critical infrastructure like the electric grid. 

Another key component of Biden’s executive order was privacy concerns of AI tools, as well as AI’s use in the dissemination of information. The order addressed fake content produced by AI and claimed the government would make it easy to tell what was created with AI and what was human-generated.

Other issues outlined in the executive order include advancing equity and civil rights, addressing algorithmic discrimination, promoting innovation and competition and more. To read the White House’s fact sheet from the executive order, click here. 

Stocks That Could Be Impacted: Biden’s executive order will impact all of the major U.S. tech companies currently working on or developing new AI tools. The companies would be under more scrutiny and be forced to adhere to the administration’s new standards.

Because companies such as OpenAi and Microsoft Corp MSFT already signed a voluntary pledge to manage the risks of AI, there may not be many immediate changes for the companies. But, as the technologies continue to evolve, it’s safe to assume the guardrails and regulations set in place by Biden will be more relevant. 

A majority of the large corporations currently working on AI technologies, such as Alphabet Inc GOOGGOOGL and NVIDIA Corp NVDA, traded higher on Monday in a sign that the market is not too worried about Biden’s executive order damaging returns of these companies. 

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