WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden will discuss the "risks and opportunities" that artificial intelligence poses for people, society and national security during a meeting with science and technology advisers at the White House on Tuesday, an official said. Biden, a Democrat, is scheduled to meet with the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) on the same day that his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, surrenders in New York over charges stemming from a probe into hush money paid to a porn star. Biden has declined to comment on Trump's legal woes, and Democratic strategists say his focus on governing will create a politically advantageous split screen of sorts as his former rival, a Republican, deals with his legal challenges. "The president will discuss the importance of protecting rights and safety to ensure responsible innovation and appropriate safeguards," a White House official said in a statement ahead of Biden's meeting. "He will call on Congress to pass bipartisan privacy legislation to protect kids and limit personal data tech companies collect on all of us."

President Biden came into office promising to restore the role of science in government after the Trump administration's rocky relationship with scientific advice. A key tool for the White House to implement its ambitious science-related agenda is the Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP--a relatively small outfit that oversees policies about science, including budget requests for agencies that conduct science and the coordination of major scientific endeavors across the federal government. Since Biden took office, OSTP has taken on a variety of sorely needed priorities, including reinvigorating government processes for scientific integrity, future pandemic preparedness, and exploring what artificial intelligence means for human rights. But these good causes have been overshadowed by controversies over OSTP's leadership. Politico recently broke a story about billionaire and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's close ties to the Biden administration's OSTP.

Top science advisers to President Joe Biden are calling for a new "bill of rights" to guard against powerful new artificial intelligence technology. The White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy on Friday launched a fact-finding mission to look at facial recognition and other biometric tools used to identify people or assess their emotional or mental states and character. Biden's chief science adviser, Eric Lander, and the deputy director for science and society, Alondra Nelson, also published an opinion piece in Wired magazine detailing the need to develop new safeguards against faulty and harmful uses of AI that can unfairly discriminate against people or violate their privacy. "Enumerating the rights is just a first step," they wrote. "What might we do to protect them? Possibilities include the federal government refusing to buy software or technology products that fail to respect these rights, requiring federal contractors to use technologies that adhere to this'bill of rights,' or adopting new laws and regulations to fill gaps."

Top science advisers to President Joe Biden are calling for a new "bill of rights" to guard against powerful new artificial intelligence technology. The White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy on Friday launched a fact-finding mission to look at facial recognition and other biometric tools used to identify people or assess their emotional or mental states and character. Biden's chief science adviser, Eric Lander, and the deputy director for science and society, Alondra Nelson, also published an opinion piece in Wired magazine detailing the need to develop new safeguards against faulty and harmful uses of AI that can unfairly discriminate against people or violate their privacy. "Enumerating the rights is just a first step," they wrote. "What might we do to protect them? Possibilities include the federal government refusing to buy software or technology products that fail to respect these rights, requiring federal contractors to use technologies that adhere to this'bill of rights,' or adopting new laws and regulations to fill gaps."

Top science advisers to President Joe Biden are calling for a new "bill of rights" to guard against powerful new artificial intelligence technology. The White House s Office of Science and Technology Policy on Friday launched a fact-finding mission to look at facial recognition and other biometric tools used to identify people or assess their emotional or mental states and character. Biden's chief science adviser, Eric Lander, and the deputy director for science and society, Alondra Nelson, also published an opinion piece in Wired magazine detailing the need to develop new safeguards against faulty and harmful uses of AI that can unfairly discriminate against people or violate their privacy. "Enumerating the rights is just a first step," they wrote. "What might we do to protect them? Possibilities include the federal government refusing to buy software or technology products that fail to respect these rights, requiring federal contractors to use technologies that adhere to this'bill of rights,' or adopting new laws and regulations to fill gaps."

Pentagon technology chief Mike Griffin last week announced US military plans to form an office dedicated to procuring and deploying artificial intelligence technology. Meanwhile, the White House still doesn't have a science adviser. The US military appears to embrace AI at every strategic level, and the creation of a new office to manage the burgeoning technology is further evidence that machine learning is the future of warfare. According to Federal News Radio's Eric White, Under Secretary Griffin and fellow top brass are "alarmed at recent advances" in the field of artificial intelligence and seek to form the office as a matter of national security. US House members are also concerned about such developments, having recently introduced a bill that would allocate millions of dollars toward researching artificial intelligence with the intent of providing a study for the president to review next year. The White House, for its part, has been peculiarly silent on the subject of AI, leaving some to speculate the idea of operating a democracy without a qualified science adviser is a bad one.