The US will invest 140 million dollars in AI | The USA Print

The United States will invest $140 million to establish seven new institutes of investigation of 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 AI research institutes 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 some 500 million dollars to “support responsible innovation that promotes the common good,” explained the director of the White House Office of Technology and Science Policy, Arati Prabhakar, during the call.

The announcement comes the same day that the executives of the technology companies Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic are scheduled to come to the White House to discuss with the US Vice President, Kamala Harris, how to mitigate the potential risks of AI.

“We believe that these companies have an important responsibility,” Prabhakar explained, adding that the intention of the Government with this Thursday’s meeting is to make sure “there is a conversation” about how they are going to fulfill that responsibility.

In this regard, the White House announced that large AI companies have agreed to undergo a public evaluation of their systems during the DEF CON 31 “hacker” event, to be held in Las Vegas at the beginning of August.

During the convention, thousands of participants will analyze whether these systems are aligned with the Bill of Rights of the AI who has proposed the Government American, 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 that they respect the rights and safety of US citizens.

All this in a context of criticism from some researchers and businessmen about the unlimited development of the 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.