Biden urges APEC members to ensure AI makes improvements

US President Joe Biden on Friday urged Asia-Pacific economies to work together to ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) brings improvements and does not abuse workers or limit their potential.

Speaking at the final session of a two-day summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in San Francisco, Biden said he had briefly discussed AI with the Chinese president. , Xi Jinping, in talks held on the sidelines of APEC on Wednesday.

The president used the two days of the APEC summit to highlight the strength of the US economy and its ties with other Pacific nations, even as his vision of greater regional cooperation to counter China’s influence stumbled on the trade front with its commitment to strengthening workers’ rights.

“We are going to see more technological change in the next 10 years than we have seen in the last 50 years,” Biden said, as Xi looked at him a few places to his left at a circular conference table. “Together we have to make sure it changes for the better,” she added.

Biden said digital technologies like AI have to be used to “elevate, not limit, the potential of our people,” and noted that the United States had brought together leading AI companies in the summer to agree on voluntary commitments “to maintain systems of safe and reliable AI.”

Among the measures taken were a commitment to ensure the security of AI systems before making them available to the public, watermarking AI-generated content and minimizing the risk that AI systems pose to society, for example , promoting prejudice or discrimination.

Biden noted that he had signed an executive order last month to establish new rules on AI, such as requiring developers of the most powerful AI systems to share the results of their security tests with the government, and strengthening technologies to protect privacy. and prevent employers from using it to abuse workers.