Day 122: Biden Releases Executive Order on AI

Photo by Donghun Shin on Unsplash

Today, President Biden will sign an executive order regulating the development and use of Artificial Intelligence. In this announcement, the White House described the directives in the order. They include:

• AI safety and security standards

• Standards to protect individual privacy

• Guidelines for preventing discriminatory use of AI algorithms in housing, civil rights, and criminal justice

• Standards for responsible use in health care and education

• Principles to mitigate labor market impacts

• Practices to promote open and fair competition in the AI industry (take note, immigration lawyers: this includes expansion of visa options for highly-skilled workers and students)

• Standards for safe and responsible use of AI in global development

• Guidance for responsible acquisition and use of AI by government agencies

This summary reads like a roadmap of disruption. The executive order will incentivize publicly desirable disruption in some ways, such as by leading to rules ensuring open competition by small developers and for the use of AI in education. It also seeks to prevent or mitigate some types of disruption, such as through rules designed to study and offset local and sector-specific labor impacts (could legal services be on the list?).

I’ll add a link follow these developments on this blog as they roll out over the next year.

(Right now, I’ll note the bat circling the White House in the graphic at the top of the online announcement. I always enjoy a little whimsy in my Executive Branch.)