What HR leaders need to know about Biden’s work with companies on AI safeguards

President Biden and leaders of seven companies in the process of developing AI tools committed on July 21 to develop the technology responsibly and protect society from its potential harm.

The companies—Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI—agreed to prioritize assessing technology for safety before releasing it to the public, securing it against cyber threats and bad actors, and developing it transparently. The commitments were voluntary, and there is no enforcement mechanism.

“People must remain at the center of our AI efforts,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, wrote in a blog post, the same day the company committed to Biden’s priorities. “Establishing codes of conduct early in the development of this emerging technology will not only help ensure safety, security, and trustworthiness, it will also allow us to better unlock AI’s positive impact.”

The commitments to transparency aim to build the public’s trust, according to the White House. The companies working with the administration on the commitments agreed to explore watermarking or other signals that content was generated by AI, devote resources to understanding bias in their models, and use AI to address some of society’s biggest challenges, including cancer and climate change.

“The [AI] companies have a duty to earn people’s trust and empower users to make informed decisions, labeling content that has been altered or AI generated, rooting out bias and discrimination, strengthening privacy protections, and shielding children from harm,” President Biden said at a White House event announcing the commitment.

The move comes as companies and their HR teams figure out how AI (specifically generative AI tools like ChatGPT) will be used at work, such as whether to ban ChatGPT for work purposes, when and if using generative AI should be disclosed, and how AI tools in hiring systems might contain biases.

In February, the president issued an executive order directing the federal government to address any bias in the AI tech it uses and directed the agencies to protect the public from algorithmic bias. The EEOC clarified in May that companies are responsible if they violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act when using AI in their hiring practices.

“We’ll see more technology change in the next ten years, or even in the next few years, than we’ve seen in the last 50 years,” Biden said. “Artificial intelligence is going to transform the lives of people around the world. The group here will be critical in shepherding that innovation with responsibility and safety by design to earn the trust of Americans.”