Joe Biden's Sweeping New Executive Order Aims to Drag the US Government into the Age of ChatGPT

Joe Biden wants the US government to make wider use of artificial intelligence--and to keep commercial AI on a tighter leash. Those are two prominent themes of a sprawling executive order Biden will sign today, which issues dozens of directives for federal agencies to complete within the next year, on topics ranging from national security and immigration to housing and health care. Biden will use the Defense Production Act, a law that can compel businesses to take actions in the interest of national security, to require the makers of large AI models to report key information to the government, including when they are training a new model and what cybersecurity protections they have. That will include disclosing results of so-called red teaming exercises, intended to reveal vulnerabilities in AI models, such as those that can be used to evade controls that prevent malicious use cases such as generating malware. The goal is to monitor the potential threats AI technology can pose to national security, public health, and the economy.