This story has been updated. Please see the most recent update below.

On October 30, 2023, the White House announced that President Biden had issued the Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence. In particular, the Executive Order aims to establish new standards for artificial intelligence (AI) safety and security while promoting innovation and competition.

Notably, actions required pursuant to the Executive Order include, among other things:

• that developers of the most powerful AI systems share their safety test results and other critical information with the US government;
• the development of standards, tools, and tests to help ensure that AI systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy;
• to protect against the risks of using AI to engineer dangerous biological materials by developing strong new standards for biological synthesis screening;
• to protect Americans from AI-enabled fraud and deception by establishing standards and best practices for detecting AI-generated content and authenticating official content;
• to establish an advanced cybersecurity program to develop AI tools to find and fix vulnerabilities in critical software; and
• the development of a National Security Memorandum that directs further actions on AI and security.

On the other hand, to better protect Americans' privacy from the risks posed by AI, the Executive Order directs the following actions:

• to prioritize federal support for accelerating the development and use of privacy-preserving techniques, including ones that let AI systems be trained while preserving the privacy of the training data;
• to strengthen privacy-preserving research and technologies, such as cryptographic tools, by funding a Research Coordination Network to advance rapid breakthroughs and development;
• to evaluate how agencies collect and use commercially available information and strengthen privacy guidance for federal agencies to account for AI; and
• to develop guidelines for federal agencies to evaluate the effectiveness of privacy-preserving techniques.

You can read the press release here and the Executive Order here.

Updated: October 31, 2024

White House issues memorandum to address Executive Order

On October 24, 2024, the White House issued a memorandum to fulfill the Executive Order directive and provided deadlines for the actions to be taken throughout. 

The memorandum outlines several objectives including that the U.S. Government must cultivate a stable and responsible framework to advance international AI governance that fosters safe, secure, and trustworthy AI development and use; manages AI risks; realizes democratic values; respects human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy; and promotes worldwide benefits from AI. The memorandum also covers additional topics including:

• promoting and securing the US foundational AI capabilities;
• responsibly harnessing AI to achieve national security objectives;
• fostering a stable, responsible, and globally beneficial international AI governance landscape; and
• ensuring effective coordination, execution, and reporting of AI policy.

You can read the memorandum here.