washington — The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies have new marching orders — to more quickly embrace and deploy artificial intelligence as a matter of national security.
U.S. President Joe Biden signed the directive, part of a new national security memorandum, on Thursday. The goal is to make sure the United States remains a leader in AI technology while also aiming to prevent the country from falling victim to AI tools wielded by adversaries like China.
The memo, which calls AI “an era-defining technology,” also lays out guidelines that the White House says are designed to prevent the use of AI to harm civil liberties or human rights.
The new rules will “ensure that our national security agencies are adopting these technologies in ways that align with our values,” a senior administration official told reporters, speaking about the memo on the condition of anonymity before its official release.
The official added that a failure to more quickly adopt AI “could put us at risk of a strategic surprise by our rivals.”
“Because countries like China recognize similar opportunities to modernize and revolutionize their own military and intelligence capabilities using artificial intelligence, it’s particularly imperative that we accelerate our national security community’s adoption and use of cutting-edge AI,” the official said.
But some civil liberties advocates are raising concerns that the new guidelines lack sufficient safeguards.
“Despite acknowledging the considerable risks of AI, this policy does not go nearly far enough to protect us from dangerous and unaccountable AI systems,” according to a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union’s Patrick Toomey.
“National security agencies must not be left to police themselves as they increasingly subject people in the United States to powerful new technologies,” said Toomey, who serves as deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project.
The new guidelines build on an executive order issued last year that directed all U.S. government agencies to craft policies for how they intend to use AI.
They also seek to address issues that could hamper Washington’s ability to more quickly incorporate AI into national security systems.
Provisions outlined in the memo call for a range of actions to protect the supply chains that produce advanced computer chips critical for AI systems. It also calls for additional actions to combat economic espionage that would allow U.S. adversaries or non-U.S. companies from stealing critical innovations.
“We have to get this right, because there is probably no other technology that will be more critical to our national security in the years ahead,” said White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, addressing an audience at the National Defense University in Washington on Thursday.
“The stakes are high,” he said. “If we don’t act more intentionally to seize our advantages, if we don’t deploy AI more quickly and more comprehensively to strengthen our national security, we risk squandering our hard-earned lead.
“We could have the best team but lose because we didn’t put it on the field,” he added.
Although the memo prioritizes the implementation of AI technologies to safeguard U.S. interests, it also directs officials to work with allies and others to create a stable framework for use of AI technologies across the globe.
“A big part of the national security memorandum is actually setting out some basic principles,” Sullivan said, citing ongoing talks with the G-7 and AI-related resolutions at the United Nations.
“We need to ensure that people around the world are able to seize the benefits and mitigate the risks,” he said.
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