AI Summit at the White House: Meta, Google, OpenAI Pledge Commitments to AI Safety

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0:39Now, this is voluntary. They weren't summoned. This isn't some sort of legislation that's coming down the pipe. And by all means, the concept of AI safety, I think, is good. But today on the podcast, we're going to be breaking down what this means, if this is just them trying to, you know, showboat and say that they're good and don't regulate or ban us or whatever, or if there's actually some merit to what's going on. So without further ado, let's jump into it. So the companies that are in question that are going include Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI. And all of them essentially have voluntarily pledged their commitment to safeguarding users, which, of course, safeguarding users, that is a good thing.

1:22So I think this is a proactive response to what some are calling a formidable risk shadowing the AI landscape. Of course, there's cybersecurity risks. There's, you know, combating all sorts of things. There is a, you know, a novel move of a watermarking system for AI generated content. There's the action plan that they're kind of currently developing based on all of this. And it's varied. And, you know, it's some people argue it's not very substantial. Essentially, in my opinion, this is a very high stakes game where, you know, if these industry titans don't live up to their pledges, all bets are kind of off as far as how Congress may regulate them and other things that may happen down the pipe.

2:09Although there currently is no set consequences for failure to adhere to what they're saying they're going to do. So a White House insider hinted, quote, there's no rollout party on Friday, emphasizing that these commitments are a work in progress. The idea is to kind of lay the foundation with the companies and then the companies are expected to kind of hit the ground running on implementation. And I think this is really interesting because I think getting, you know, with a new technology like this that's so new, getting a consensus from Republicans and Democrats, both sides of the aisle to work together, they're definitely both going to have different concerns, different arguments and trying to get an AI regulatory framework.

2:50I'm not even sure even at this point real legislation being passed will necessarily be beneficial because with everything that we are discovering in AI and how fast and rapidly it is advancing, you know, there may be things we decide to regulate that are non-issues and then there may be things that are serious issues that we completely bypass. I have obviously been very vocal on the fact that I believe AI needs to intrinsically be hard-coded to respect human life. It seems somehow that is controversial to a lot of people. I think that this is an absolute non-starter, anything that doesn't include that.

3:30But that's just my opinion. In any case, actually, no, that's not my opinion. That should be everyone's opinion. We're all humans that are listening to this, I presume, unless you're letting your cat listen to this. And so, yeah, we should all be on team human race since we're all on the same team. In any case, I think it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. And there is a lot of other issues, right? I think that that may be one that a lot of people could rally around. But there's a lot of issues that are disputed by both sides of the political aisle. And so I think it's going to be difficult for them to actually pass hard legislation.

4:03So it appears what they're trying to do right now is have a discussion where they're saying, you know, essentially it's the White House. So and the White House and their advisors who have been selected are saying, hey, this is the framework we would like. And it's kind of on good faith that they're going to let these AI companies follow this framework. There is no actual legislation. There's no consequences if this doesn't happen. Although I'm sure the understanding is here's a framework we'd like you to follow. You can be collaborative and putting this together. If you don't follow it, you know, we'll probably come after you and try to regulate you or punish you in some way.

4:35So I'm sure that's the underlying tone there, but I think that's kind of the angle they're taking because they know they don't have any actual power at the moment to regulate or take any of these big companies down right now. There's not kind of a groundswell or a general consensus on how to do that. So I think on the eve of this very significant get together, the White House dropped a hint about an executive order that is currently in the works. And it's aimed at mitigating AI risks again, right? When you see the White House is dropping a hint that they're going to do some sort of executive order.

5:10You can see they don't have consensus from Congress. And I'll be very curious to see what that looks like, where that goes, and kind of what that entails. because evidently if you're doing an executive order, you probably don't have the buy-in from both sides of the political spectrum, which means both sides of the country arguably aren't agreeing on it. Or maybe you're trying to get something done very fast. But either way, it's a bit of a red flag if you have to push something through an executive order. So I'll be very curious to see what happens there. So I think they don't have a lot of details.

5:45The official word is that actions could span across multiple federal agencies and departments that may start to get involved with this. The lead up to this event has seen the Biden administration digitally engaging with tech executives, labor and civil rights leaders. um rewinding to may a notable announcement including 140 million dollars in funding and policy guidance from the white house to the national science foundation which was essentially intended to um kind of get some new national ai research institutes going so microsoft google nvidia open ai and others have all agreed to public um evaluations of their language models at this year's DEFCON, which I think is very interesting.

6:34And it'll be interesting to see kind of what happens. I, for one, have been quite alarmed by the White House's stance and kind of their direction with AI overall to be 100 % honest. And I think that that's something that is shared by a number of people. You know, one of the big things they did back in May was to put Kamala Harris in front of, you know, and be in charge of artificial intelligence. This was something that was criticized in the Santa Barbara news press, and I believe, which is a left-leaning journal, which, you know, should otherwise be supportive of her. I think this is kind of a no-brainer, right?

7:08She obviously doesn't have any experience in AI, probably very little experience in tech. And so putting someone like her in charge of artificial intelligence, which is a very nuanced, complex, and incredibly critical technology to our nation, I think is a big mistake, in my opinion. I guess it's left to be seen where that goes. But in any case, I've been, like I've said, less than impressed with some of the directives that the White House is taking on AI, as I think this really, like, the goal here should be encouraging American exceptionalism. And whatever country you are listening to this from, there's some countries that I feel like have really pushed for AI to be very important in their country and in their developments.

7:51And I think, you know, good on them for doing that. I've seen some really impressive things out of Japan and a lot of other countries. So I think there is a right way to do this in a wrong way. And I really hope that most countries are taking it seriously in looking at the risks and also the benefits of AI and how this can help their, you know, their GDPs and their countries. Because I believe there is some very substantial improvements to be made in GDP and globally from AI. and some countries will win some countries will not be able to take advantage of this if they're not you know focused on it so in any case I think the big initiative right now is kind of that's coming down as far as AI regulation and all of these different AI leaders going to the White House is on the heels of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's call to arms for AI regulation he is talking about balancing innovation with control through his safe or secure accountability foundations explain framework so schumer's vision rather than prescribing specific policy requests is getting lawmakers to create rules that essentially focus on national security job loss and misinformation so he said last month ai could be our most spectacular innovation yet a force that could ignite a new era of technical advancements scientific discovery and industrial might.

9:16So I really think completing the framework, or I believe completing the framework of Schumer's AI Enlightened series for senators has been in full swing for quite a while. And the third briefing was slated for next week on this. So the agenda of these meetings essentially revolves around talking about AI technology and decoding its national security implications. And I think in In a response to Schumer's kind of AI rallying cry, a bunch of lawmakers, which should be noted, are rather bipartisan, have been pretty quickly working on a lot of different legislation to focus on AI. So notably, I think the Defense Department is going to find itself restrained on generative AI use because of a few rules that are coming into this year's National Defense Authorization Act with a Senate vote that is going to be voted on next week.

10:16Now, my opinion on that, if you listen to my latest episode on the military, is that I wish there was no AI in the military. I mean, I wish there was no conflict in the world globally, but obviously it's impossible to avoid global conflict. It's impossible to avoid AI getting integrated into other militaries. And so I think if we're sitting here saying, you know, let's get AI pulled out of the Defense Department, let's pass these acts to stunt it. Well, China and Russia are not going to do that. So if you want to weaken your own countries, go for it. This is a powerful technology that will be inevitably embedded into defense tools.

10:57So if you would like to have those things banned and have your adversaries stronger than you, you do that at your own peril and your own risk. I don't think that that is a wise move. I don't think that is a move that should be made. Do I like the concept of AI in defense? Absolutely not. But neither do I like the concept of everyone in the world having nuclear bombs. Unfortunately, it's the world we live in and it has to be done. So I think Friday, this is going to have representatives from each of the seven tech giants that gathered in person at the White House. And they're going to read off physically their commitments to AI and what they plan on doing.

11:35and I think that this is going to be a really I think this will be a really interesting space to see number one you know how they actually are implementing their commitments and number two if they're following through on what they're saying this week on how they're actually going to implement AI safety into the future.