Over ‘enormous’ AI concerns, Biden obtains tech safety commitments.

WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden evoked AI’s “enormous” risk and promise Friday at a White House meeting with tech leaders who committed to guarding against everything from cyber-attacks to fraud as the sector revolutionizes society.

“It is astounding,” Biden said, highlighting AI’s “enormous, enormous promise of both risk to our society and our economy and our national security, but also incredible opportunities.”

Standing alongside top representatives from Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, Biden said the cutting-edge companies had made commitments to “guide responsible innovation” as AI rips ever deeper into personal and business life.

“We’ll see more technology change in the next 10 years or even in the next few years than we’ve seen in the last 50 years. That has been an astounding revelation to me,” Biden said. “The group here will be critical in shepherding that innovation with responsibility and safety.”

Ahead of the meeting, the seven AI giants committed to a series of self-regulated safeguards that the White House said would “underscore three principles that must be fundamental to the future of AI: safety, security and trust.”

Although AI — in which computer programs learn to do many jobs currently performed by humans — is seen as a hugely empowering tool, it also poses potentially nightmarish risks.

In their pledge, the companies agreed to develop “robust technical mechanisms,” such as watermarking systems, to ensure users know when content is from AI and not human-generated.

Worry that content created by artificial intelligence will be used for fraud and misinformation has ramped up as the technology improves and the 2024 presidential election gets closer.

Already, supporters of Republican candidate Ron DeSantis have gotten attention with an attack ad featuring an artificially generated voice like that of party frontrunner Donald Trump.