American Vice President Kamala Harris held a meeting with the chief executives of Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic Thursday in the White House to discuss the responsible development of artificial intelligence, the White House confirmed to CNBC Tuesday.
The vice president will also be joined by other senior members of the Biden administration, including Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce; Jeff Zients, Biden’s chief of staff; Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, and Arati Prabhakar, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, among others.
Harris will address the need for safeguards that can mitigate AI’s potential risks and emphasize the importance of ethical and trustworthy innovation, the White House said.
The United States is home to the biggest innovators in tech and AI — including Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which created ChatGPT — but trails internationally in regulating the industry.
Google in March invited users in the United States and Britain to test its AI chatbot, known as Bard, as it continues on its gradual path to catch up with ChatGPT.
Biden has urged Congress to pass laws putting stricter limits on the tech sector, but these efforts have little chance of making headway given political divisions among lawmakers.
The lack of rules has given Silicon Valley freedom to put out new products rapidly — and stoked fears that AI technologies will wreak havoc on society before the government can catch up.
Representatives for Google and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment. A representative for Anthropic confirmed the company will attend the meeting.
Generative AI exploded into public consciousness after OpenAI released its viral new chatbot called ChatGPT late last year.
In the months since, Microsoft has been integrating OpenAI’s generative technology across many of its products as part of its multi-year, multi-billion-dollar investment in the company. Google launched a competing generative chatbot called Bard in February, and Anthropic announced its chatbot, Claude, in March.
While many experts are optimistic about the potential of generative AI, the technology has also inspired questions and concerns from regulators and tech industry giants. Geoffrey Hinton, known to some in the tech industry as the godfather of AI, left his longtime position at Google partly to share his concerns about the potential threat of AI, according to a report Monday.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, was one of more than 27,000 people to sign an open letter in March that called on AI labs to pause development.
The White House said Thursday’s meeting is part of the Biden administration’s broader effort to engage with experts about the technology and ensure that AI products are safe before they’re deployed to the public.
Billionaire Elon Musk in early March formed an AI company called X.AI, based in the US state of Nevada, according to business documents.
Musk, who is already the boss of Twitter and Tesla, is listed as a director of X.AI Corporation, a state business filing indicated.
Musk’s founding of what appears to be a rival to OpenAI came despite him recently joining tech leaders and AI critics in calling for an overall pause in the development of artificial intelligence.
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