USA will invest US$140 million (€126.8 million at current exchange rates) to establish seven new research institutes of the artificial intelligence (AI) that will drive responsible innovation and ensure that advances in technology serve the common good, the White House announced Thursday.
The centers will join the 18 institutes of research on AI that are already operating in the country, officials from the Joe Biden Administration advanced in a call with journalists.
In this way, the United States will have invested a total of about $500 million (€452.8 million) to “support a innovation responsibility that promotes the common good”, explained during the call the director of the Office of Technological and Scientific Policies of the White House, Arati Prabhakar.
The announcement comes on the same day that the managers of technology companies are expected to Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic attend the White House to discuss with US Vice President Kamala Harris how to mitigate the potential risks of AI.
“We believe that these companies have an important responsibility“, explained Prabhakar, who added that the intention of the Government with the meeting this Thursday is to make sure that “there is a conversation” about how they are going to fulfill that responsibility.
In this sense, the White House announced that the large companies of AI have agreed to undergo a public evaluation of their systems during the DEF CON 31 hacker event, to be held in Las Vegas in early August.
During the convention, thousands of participants will analyze whether these systems are aligned with the Rights letter of AI that the US government has proposed, and which includes principles such as the privacy of user data or protection against discriminatory algorithms.
The Government will also issue new guidelines on the use of AI by government agencies to ensure they respect the rights and safety of US citizens.
All this in a context of critics by some researchers and businessmen about the limitless development of AI by companies like Google or Microsoft.
In early April, thousands of experts from around the world called in an open letter for a pause in training systems more powerful than GPT-4, the latest generative AI model from the OpenAI company, to better understand the risks and potential consequences for humanity of this type of technology.