federal government says it's creating an artificial intelligence safety Institute aimed at developing safety standards and AI model testing this comes after President Biden signed an executive order on Monday to protect against the threats posed by AI let's go to ABC's J O'Brien on Capitol Hill Senior White House correspondent Selena Wang and ABC News contributor Google tech policy fellow Mike Muse for more Selena this AI safety Institute is focused on a global approach vice president Harris is in the UK right now for a global AI Summit so walk us through what this institute will actually do
and how the administration is trying to work with the International Community on this well Diane the White House is making very clear after this sweeping executive order that it's not just America's problem America alone cannot set these standards to try and limit the dangers of artificial intelligence but it must work with the world and the US is already seen as a leading player in the development of artificial intelligence technology but it has been somewhat lagging behind in the regulation and the president and the US wants to change that as you mentioned the vice president is
currently in the UK for This Global AI Summit while she was there she announced that the US has had 30 countries joined the US in a us-led declaration signed on to that in order to responsibly use artificial intelligence in the military this AI Institute is focused on evaluating and trying to figure out what the risks are in different AI models and trying to mitigate those risks set standards and for water marking explaining when something is AI generated trying to show people what AI content showing how to detect that setting stands for detection and for labeling
it as part of that AI safety Institute also it's going to include working with other research centers around the world and sharing information that the US has so this is really about us trying to set standards here as well as trying to be the leader in the actual technological development Mike you do a lot of work with AI so what's your take on this that's what the report that Cena is doing is absolutely correct the challenge that the US faces that they are behind in the regulations the part of Vice President Harris's trip to the
UK is to really rally uh the global Community around what United States sees as the principles of AI but the challenge that they have is that the European Union is already way ahead of the United States in the sense of one understanding the regulations but then two putting regulations at they're getting close to the point where they're putting regulations in place and if the European Union begins to set the regulation for what artificial intelligence is then that creates the private sector to follow behind what the EU standards are and that isn't what the United States
wants but the challenge to the United States though is that uh Congress just doesn't have uh its mind wrapped around what artificial intelligence is all the use cases of it is and how to separate it from social media uh United States Congress has yet to even come up with regulations when it comes to data privacy and so that just shows you the challenges uh that the United States has with looking at at um what the Congress is doing far behind what congressional is doing with data privacy versus what the European Union has already done on
data privacy so United States is far behind the regulation point of view so Jay what is the appetite on Congress for regulation on AI what are those conversations like right now well Mike just walked it walked us through it incredibly well in the sense that there's an appetite in Congress to do something but Congress hasn't done anything up until this point the strongest urge to regulate AI really comes from the Senate and particularly from Chuck Schumer who's the majority leader the top Democrat in the Senate he controls that chamber they had that very public AI
Summit a while back that you and I covered Diane were Tech leaders like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg came here to Capitol Hill the brief lawmakers on the positives and the negatives about artificial intelligence Schumer then met with me and other reporters after that Summit he said it was successful he said he wanted to have future Summits and eventually wants to look at AI legislation but none has been written none has been brought to the floor and lawmakers tell me and tell others that they are concerned about the double-edged sword here they want to regulate
AI but they don't want to overregulation as Selena just mentioned is coming into the void here and they're doing as much as they can but really as Mike just noted it's on Congress to do something and Congress wants to do something but it doesn't look like they'd be able to pull that off in the next couple of months and potentially because of the election and the attention that might be diverted to the election come 2024 maybe not in the next few years so Mike what kind of Regulation would you want to see and what would
you warn against the biggest warning is what Jay mentioned right there is to make sure that you don't over regulate until you stifle Innovation that is what uh America is so known for is this beautiful Innovation that we always create that the globe also then kind of follows behind the most concerning for me is is just the algorithmic biases that are associated and that private companies do not uh rely so much on AI technology to do the work but to actually make sure that there are humans there uh to oversee uh and regulate the quality
of the output that the AI is actually doing so ensuring that companies have product managers if you will I do like what the B Administration has done in laying out the Bill of Rights and kind of giving Baseline principles for private companies who may not be as well funded as microsof or as Google to have the competency of employees who have understanding from a policy perspective of it but they can use as Bill of Rights of their startup in order to Garner uh the principles around creating these programs with the glaring Spotlight being on algorithm
biases that can cause harm to um uh vulnerable communities and populations all right j o Brian senior White House correspondant Lena Wang Google tech policy fellow Mike Muse thank you all hi everyone George Stephanopoulos here thank for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our Channel and don't forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching
