White House backs public evaluation of ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms

(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration will support public assessments of generative AI systems like ChatGPT to educate the public about whether these new systems align with the administration’s “bill of rights” for AI that’s aimed at preventing the new technology’s misuse, The White House announced early on Thursday.

These assessments will take place at a hacker convention in Las Vegas in August, the White House said.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday plans to meet with the CEOs of Alphabet, Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI to “underscore” their “responsibility” as they develop AI and to “emphasize the importance of driving responsible, trustworthy, and ethical innovation with safeguards that mitigate risks and potential harms to individuals and our society,” the White House said. This meeting will be closed to the press.

The White House also confirmed that the National Science Foundation will spend $140 million to open seven new national research institutes studying AI, which will expand the number of institutes to 25 across the country.

These institutes will work with institutes of higher education, private companies and the government to “to pursue transformative AI advances that are ethical, trustworthy, responsible, and serve the public good,” the White House said.

“The new Institutes announced today will advance AI R&D to drive breakthroughs in critical areas, including climate, agriculture, energy, public health, education, and cybersecurity,” read the statement from the White House.

The White House’s budget office will also be announcing on Thursday that it plans to make public a draft of the policy guidance it plans to provide federal agencies with regarding the use of AI systems that makes sure its use “centers on safeguarding the American people’s rights and safety.”

The White House Office of Management and Budget plans to release the draft this summer and will open it up for public comment before it’s finalized, the White House said.

With regard to the public assessments of platforms like ChatGPT, the White House said that it has received a commitment “from leading AI developers, including Anthropic, Google, Hugging Face, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI, and Stability AI, to participate in a public evaluation of AI systems, consistent with responsible disclosure principles.” The assessments will take place at a hacker convention, called DEF CON 31, which is scheduled to be held in Las Vegas this August, according to the White House.

“This will allow these models to be evaluated thoroughly by thousands of community partners and AI experts to explore how the models align with the principles and practices outlined in the Biden-Harris Administration’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and AI Risk Management Framework,” the White House said. “This independent exercise will provide critical information to researchers and the public about the impacts of these models, and will enable AI companies and developers take steps to fix issues found in those models. Testing of AI models independent of government or the companies that have developed them is an important component in their effective evaluation.”

These are not the first steps the Biden Administration has taken regarding the issue.

In February, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that directed federal agencies to “root out bias in their design and use of new technologies, including AI, and to protect the public from algorithmic discrimination,” said the White House.