[In a legislative effort to stave off human extinction at the hands of roaming hunter-killer robots, U.S. President Joe Biden has issued an Executive Order establishing new standards to guide AI development. The Executive Order includes "developing standards, tools, and tests to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of AI systems" and "sharing relevant data on AI models with the U.S. government."

Concerns about the potential negative effects of artificial intelligence development have grown in step with the rapid rise of AI development itself. While it is fun to think about the Skynet scenario, a more immediate problem is the potential for AI to be used and abused to generate extremely realistic audio and video clips, as Biden himself pointed out in a recent speech. [With AI, scammers can record three seconds of your voice.

"All joking aside, a three-second recording of your voice is enough to spoof you enough to fool your family.

The new Executive Order promises "the most comprehensive action to date to protect Americans from the potential risks of AI systems," and it definitely covers a lot of ground. Highlights include:

And the blurb about "developing best practices for the use of AI in sentencing, parole and probation, pretrial release and detention, risk assessment, surveillance, crime prediction and predictive policing, and forensic analysis" is a bit Minority Report for my taste Perhaps too much, but it also calls for action to address "algorithmic discrimination". And, of course, there are plans to advance and accelerate AI research in the U.S. through the establishment of a "National AI Research Resource" to make relevant information more readily available to researchers and students, and through increased funding for research in various AI-related fields.

Biden also called for bipartisan congressional action to ensure privacy protections in the training and use of AI systems. In his speech, Biden said (via CNBC), "This Executive Order is a bold move, but Congress still needs to act."

The executive order was released on the same day as the announcement of the G7 nations' agreement on guiding principles for AI development and a voluntary code of conduct for developers, under what is called the Hiroshima Process, established in May to "promote guardrails for advanced AI systems at the global level." The initiative is part of a broader international discussion.

"We believe that our joint efforts through the Hiroshima AI Process will help to bridge the digital divide and achieve digital inclusion for the common good around the world, including developing and emerging countries, by ensuring that safe, secure, and reliable AI systems are designed, developed, deployed, and used to We are confident that we will foster an open and enabling environment that maximizes the benefits of technology while mitigating risks," the G7 leaders said in a joint statement.

The G7 countries also called on developers of AI systems to commit to an international code of conduct and said the first signatories to these guidelines would be announced "in the near future."