United States: tech giants at the White House on Thursday to talk about the “risks” of AI

The rapid progress of artificial intelligence (AI) raises fears, particularly on an ethical level. How can we progress in these technologies responsibly? To respond, the White House invited the leaders of highly advanced companies in the sector, Google, Microsoft, OpenAi and Anthropic, along with several members of the executive, including Vice President Kamala Harris, to meet on Thursday.

“Our goal is to have a frank discussion about current and near-term risks that we perceive in AI developments,” reads the invitation viewed by AFP. The government is looking at “steps to reduce those risks and other ways we can work together to ensure that the American people benefit from advances in AI while protecting them from harm.”

A general reflection

According to the White House, the four American bosses – Sam Altman for OpenAI, Dario Amodei for Anthropic, Satya Nadella for Microsoft and Sundar Pichai for Google – have confirmed their participation. President Joe Biden “clearly” said in April that these companies “must ensure their products are safe before making them available to the general public,” the invitation states.

A White House official said the government wanted to emphasize the need “to innovate responsibly, ethically and trustworthily “. Interviews are also underway with various researchers, companies and NGOs to feed the reflection on AI.

Initiatives that are multiplying around the world

This technology has been very present in everyday life for years, from social media recommendation algorithms to recruitment software and many high-end household appliances. But the dazzling success this winter of ChatGPT , the generative AI interface of OpenAI – a largely Microsoft-funded start-up – has launched a race for ever more intuitive and capable systems that are generating new levels of excitement and concern.

Especially when Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, talks about the upcoming advent of “general AI”, when programs will be “smarter than humans in general”. Geoffrey Hinton, considered one of the founding fathers of AI, warned on Monday that ” profound risks for society and humanity in an interview with the “New York Times” after resigning from his position at Google.

In terms of regulation, Europe hopes to again lead the way with an ad hoc regulation, as it did with the Personal Data Act. The White House released a “Plan for an AI Bill of Rights” in late 2022, a brief document that lists general principles such as protection against dangerous or fallible systems.