America must do more to tackle the power of artificial intelligence, President Joe Biden said in a particularly tense State of the Union address Thursday evening. Establishing his policy priorities, Biden advocated for tougher privacy laws and penalties for drug dealers.
“I've signed over 400 bipartisan bills, but there's a lot more work to do,” Biden told a joint session of Congress. “Strengthening penalties for fentanyl trafficking. Pass bipartisan privacy legislation to protect our kids online. Take advantage of the promise of AI and protect against its dangers. Ban AI voice impersonation and more.”
Biden's vote was rigged in an AI-generated deep-fake robocall targeting New Hampshire voters in January.
The company behind the deal, Lingo Telecom, was issued a cease and desist order by the US Federal Communications Commission. As the 2024 election season heats up, the FCC has since banned the use of AI by robocalls.
“The increase in these types of calls has worsened over the past few years as this technology now has the potential to impersonate the voices of celebrities, political candidates and even close family members to confuse users with false information,” the FCC said at the time.
The Biden administration has been working to crack down on artificial intelligence generated by AI. Last year, the White House brought together leading generative AI developers, including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Anthropic, Hugging Face, IBM, Stability AI, Amazon, Meta, and Inflection, to pledge responsible AI development.
In February, the Biden administration said it would use watermarking and encryption to combat political dissent. Later that month, Biden announced the launch of the AI Safety Institute Consortium, which includes participants such as Amazon, Google, Apple, Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI and NVIDIA.
But Biden is not alone in criticizing AI. Donald Trump, Biden's opponent in the 2024 US presidential election, also spoke out against AI, calling it “terrifying” in an interview with Fox Business.
Even Pope Francis has come out against generative AI after Pope, Biden and Trump all fell victim to AI-generated depth images.
In his speech in January, the Pope said, “We must be aware of the rapid changes that are happening now and guide them by respecting institutions and laws that protect basic human rights and promote basic human development.” “Artificial intelligence should serve our best human potential and our highest aspirations, not compete with them.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
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