White House: Big Tech and AI Companies Pledge Safe Development

The Biden Administration has announced voluntary commitments from seven companies to help move toward safe, secure and transparent development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

The commitments include a range of measures designed to better understand the risks and ethical implications of the new technologies while providing greater transparency and restricting the potential for misuse, the White House said in a Friday (July 21) fact sheet.

The companies making the voluntary commitments are Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, the fact sheet said.

“Companies that are developing these emerging technologies have a responsibility to ensure their products are safe,” the White House said in the fact sheet. “To make the most of AI’s potential, the Biden-Harris Administration is encouraging this industry to uphold the highest standards to ensure that innovation doesn’t come at the expense of Americans’ rights and safety.”

The commitments include a call for the companies to undertake internal and external security testing of their AI systems before their release, according to the fact sheet. Additionally, they commit to sharing information across the industry and with governments, civil society and academia on managing AI risks. Further, firms pledge to invest in cybersecurity and insider threat safeguards to protect proprietary and unreleased model weights.

The companies also agree to facilitate third-party discovery and reporting of vulnerabilities in their AI systems and develop technical mechanisms to ensure that users know when AI generates content, per the fact sheet.

“As we advance this agenda at home, the Administration will work with allies and partners to establish a strong international framework to govern the development and use of AI,” the White House said in the fact sheet.

This announcement comes about three months after Vice President Kamala Harris and senior White House officials met with the CEOs of four of the companies — Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI — to discuss the need for companies to be transparent about their AI systems, the importance of being able to validate the safety, security and efficacy of the systems, and the need to keep the systems from criminals.

President Joe Biden “dropped by” the meeting to underscore the importance of these issues, the White House said at the time.