With Musk in tow, Trump eyes changes to government policies on AI and its dangers
CNN
Donald Trump’s agenda as US president will include overseeing the development of artificial intelligence, potentially the most powerful technology of our time. He has promised to “slash excess regulations” and tapped tech billionaire Elon Musk to help lead the effort.
Donald Trump is poised to enter the White House for the second time. His agenda will include overseeing the development of artificial intelligence, potentially the most powerful technology of our time. The president-elect has promised to “slash excess regulations” and tapped tech billionaire Elon Musk, another critic of government rules, to help lead the effort. More specifically, the Republican Party, in its election platform, said it would repeal a sweeping executive order signed by President Joe Biden that set out actions to manage AI’s national security risks and prevent discrimination by AI systems, among other goals. The Republican document said the executive order contained “radical leftwing ideas” that hindered innovation. Sandra Wachter, professor of technology and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, is watching what happens next closely. AI is replete with risks that “needed addressing yesterday” through robust regulation, she told CNN. Here are some of the dangers of unrestricted AI. For years, AI systems have demonstrated their ability to reproduce society’s biases — for example, about race and gender — because those systems are trained on data on past actions by humans, many of whom hold these biases. When AI is used to decide who to hire or approve for a mortgage, the result can often be discriminatory.
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