What's in Biden's AI executive order?

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Happy Halloween to all those celebrating tonight!

To start today's Sentences, we're going to discuss President Biden's executive order on AI.

—Rachel DuRose, Future Perfect fellow

UP FIRST

President Biden's big AI executive order, explained

Andy Feng/Getty Images/iStockphoto

The Biden administration's long-promised executive order on artificial intelligence is finally here. The order, which Biden signed on Monday, builds on previous efforts to accommodate the hopes of tech CEOs to the fears of civil rights advocates.

The lowdown: The EO directs various federal agencies and departments to create standards and regulations for companies and federal agencies on the use or oversight of AI. Still, many of the EO's provisions don't (and can't) have the force of law behind them, and their effectiveness will largely depend on how federal agencies carry them out. Here's what you need to know:

The order requires companies to notify the federal government when training an AI model that poses a serious risk to national security or public safety. Companies must also share the results of their risk assessments with the government.

Fears that AI could be used to create chemical, biological, radioactive, or nuclear (CBRN) weapons are addressed in a few ways. The Department of Homeland Security will evaluate the potential for AI to be used to produce and counter weapons, and the Department of Defense will study AI biosecurity risks and mitigation strategies.

Another concern about AI is its ability to produce text, images, and sounds that are impossible to tell from those created by humans. The EO calls for the Department of Commerce to create and issue guidance on best practices to detect AI-generated content, but that's a far cry from having the technology to do so.

This is not the first step to AI regulation. Biden has previously taken actions related to AI, and the Trump administration issued an AI EO of its own back in 2019. There's also an effort within Congress to come up with AI legislation.

The stakes: While the EO is being praised as a necessary step, it certainly does not put the issue of AI to rest. Parts of the order will go into effect as soon as 90 days from now, while others may take up to a year, if not more.

The senior administration official acknowledged that while the order can encourage agencies to use their authority to regulate AI and support them in the process, in some cases it can't force them to take action. Only Congress has the power to create fully funded AI laws that have penalties for those who ignore them. And so far there's little sign lawmakers will pass anything on that front.

"We face a genuine inflection point," Biden said in a short speech before signing the order, "one of those moments where the decisions we make in the very near term are going to set the course for the next decades … There's no greater change that I can think of in my life than AI presents."

Read senior Vox reporter Sara Morrison's full story here »

CATCH UP

How the Israel-Hamas war is fueling hate against Muslims and Jews

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Deadly violence in the Middle East is spurring attacks and heightening fear in Muslim, Jewish, and Arab (especially Palestinian) communities across the United States. The FBI warned last week that "the volume and frequency of threats to Americans, especially those in the Jewish, Arab American, and Muslim communities in the United States, have increased, raising our concern that violent extremists and lone offenders motivated by or reacting to ongoing events could target these communities."

Hate crimes in general appear to be on the rise: They increased by 7 percent in 2022 compared to 2021. And these numbers are probably an undercount. Many police departments opt out of submitting hate crime data to the FBI, and it remains difficult for officers to prove that a reported crime was motivated by bias.

Anti-Jewish attacks, the second highest hate crimes category after anti-Black, rose to 1,124 incidents in 2022, according to the FBI. There were a total of 3,697 antisemitic incidents in 2022, according to the Anti-Defamation League. This is the highest number recorded since the ADL's data tracking began in 1979. On October 24, the ADL reported 312 antisemitic incidents between October 7 and 23.

Hate crimes against Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab communities remain underreported. The University of California Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute released a US study in 2021 that found that more than 55 percent of those who faced Islamophobia said they did not report it to authorities. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has said it has received 774 complaints and reported bias incidents against Muslims between October 7 and October 24, the highest rate since 2015.

Read race and policy reporter Fabiola Cineas's full piece here »

If you have questions about the ongoing war, let us know here. And here's where you can keep track of all our developing coverage.

VERBATIM

🗣️ "The Congress is deeply polarized and even dysfunctional to the extent that it is very unlikely to produce any meaningful AI legislation in the near future. … The executive order is probably the best we can expect from the US government at this time."

— Columbia University law professor Anu Bradford on Biden's EO. [MIT Technology Review]

AROUND THE WEB

The US Department of Education will withhold $7.2 million in payment owed to loan servicer MOHELA due to their failure to send on-time billing statements to 2.5 million borrowers. [NPR]

The November 1 deadline is approaching for the approximately 1.7 million undocumented Afghanistan nationals living in Pakistan to leave. On October 4, Pakistan announced it would expel undocumented Afghan migrants (even those who were born in the country but do not hold Pakistani identification) who do not leave before the deadline. [Reuters]

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at least 5,800 children and women have been killed in Gaza thus far. As of October 30, 70 percent of the 8,309 deaths in Gaza have been women and children. An additional 21,408 people have been injured. In Israel, approximately 1,400 people have died and 5,431 have been injured. [OCHA]