Joe Biden warns of AI dangers, urges tech companies to make safe products

Lessons from social media experience

Biden's comments did not support the extreme stance taken by Musk and others, but he wasn't completely supportive of AI either. While mentioning that the technology could be a great helping hand in solving problems like diseases and climate change, the U.S. President also pointed out potential risks such as those to national security, society, and the economy arising from AI usage.

Biden used the example of social media to point out the dangers of powerful technologies when they were made available without the right safeguards. He made it a point to mention the impact on mental health, feelings, and hopelessness, especially in young people due to the absence of safeguards in social media usage.

During the meeting, Biden reiterated a call to pass the privacy legislation that limits user data collected by tech companies, putting an end to advertising targeting children, and asking companies to focus on health and safety during product development. Biden also said that it was the responsibility of technology companies to make sure that their products were safe before being released to the public.

The Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy (CAIDP), a tech ethics group in the U.S. has called upon the Federal Trade Commission to prevent OpenAI from commercially releasing GPT-4, SCMP said in its report.

The rapid rise of AI is also catching the eye of regulators with Italy becoming the first Western nation to institute a ban on ChatGPT. Although the ban was a result of a privacy breach, it does set the stage for countries to put an outright ban on an AI product to gauge its pros and cons, before making it available to the public at large.