原文 · 未翻译
The White House’s shambolic AI policy
Also , why states are taking things into their own hands, and what might be better
Where is the US with respect to AI policy? It’s a mess.
Let’s start with Trump’s Executive Order from June 2, and then turn to last night’s Commerce order; neither gets things right. (I will end with some suggestions about what might better).
As I noted when the EO came out (seems like a lifetime ago, even though it is actually less than two weeks!) I thought it was fantastic that Trump has issued an executive order that encourages AI companies to do some preflight testing.
But at the same time, the part of the EO on preflight testing is too weak. It is voluntary; and too narrow, focused primarily on cybersecurity. Companies can choose to ignore it, defeating the purpose of the order, and lots of things aren’t covered.
Florida’s recent lawsuit – the first state lawsuit against OpenAI– address many things that would not be covered, and highlights some of the ways in which the EO falls short. Here are some excerpts of the facts what the Attorney General for Florida—a Republican state—alleges:
(I omit the rest of that bit but encourage readers to read the full complaint)
and also alleges
they also argue for a kind of false advertising
And, of course, all of these risks were foreseeable. (Indeed I pointed to most of them in my 2023 Senate testimony and in many other writings).
Trump’s Executive Order is genuinely a step in the right direction. But it addresses basically none of these harms, and does not require companies to consider them, even voluntarily. Instead, it allows AI companies to release software that could cause all of these harms, and demands little or no effort to mitigate them. We need a stronger hand from the government in forcing companies to address those harms.
For now, and until the US government takes a more comprehensive approach to addressing AI risks, states will have little choice but to file lawsuits like these; unfortunately, those can only be filed after harms have been caused.
And indeed, in a major scoop yesterday from The Wall Street Journal that got eclipsed, New York, working with several other states, has just subpoenaed OpenAI in a massive way, demanding information on ““a range of its activities and impact on users, including advertising, user engagement and retention, handling of consumer data and health data, activities related to minors and seniors, deep learning models, model sycophancy and company policies”.
States have no choice but to pick up the slack if they are to protect their citizens.
Now let’s consider last night’s Commerce Department cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face export control order, which has basically led to the (temporary?) shutdown of Fable and Mythos, perhaps sparking a crisis in the US AI industry.