President Joe Biden’s concerns over artificial intelligence intensified after watching “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” according to the White House.
Biden signed a sweeping executive order Monday regulating the development of artificial intelligence, saying he wants to prevent AI from making social media “more addictive” or from abetting fraud.
Biden noted that he’s seen a “deep fake” video of himself, using a term for the increasingly prevalent and convincing doctored videos.
His concerns sharpened after he watched Tom Cruise’s latest action-packed thriller, according to White House deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed.
“If [Biden] hadn’t already been concerned about what could go wrong with AI before that movie, he saw plenty more to worry about,” Reed said.
Reed said he watched the film with Biden at Camp David, following its release in July earlier this year.
The film features a dangerous artificial intelligence device referred to as “The Entity,” who tracks down Ethan Hunt (Cruise) all while hijacking and sinking a Russian submarine, manipulating video footage of characters’ faces, and impersonating human voices.
These AI features are known to be a concern for Biden, who Reed said has been “profoundly curious about the technology” of AI.
Biden had witnessed AI technology create “fake AI images of himself [and] of his dog”, and had seen it perform “the incredible and terrifying technology of voice cloning,” Reed added.
“[AI] can take three seconds of your voice and turn it into an entire fake conversation.”
Under the first-of-its-kind action, companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft-backed OpenAI will be required to share safety test results with the government whenever they train an AI model that poses a potential “serious risk to national security, national economic security or national public health and safety.”
“President Biden is rolling out the strongest set of actions any government in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security, and trust,” Reed said in a statement Monday morning.
“It’s the next step in an aggressive strategy to do everything on all fronts to harness the benefits of AI and mitigate the risks,” he added.
