After more than three decades in the Senate, eight years as vice president, and three presidential campaigns, you’d expect nothing to surprise President Joe Biden, not to mention a chatbot
President Joe Biden was reportedly impressed by his first experience with generative AI last year.
His science advisor stated she and Biden used ChatGPT for a few tasks, including explaining a legal argument.
However, the incident compelled Biden to issue an executive order on AI safety.
Then, last spring, he tried ChatGPT. A few months later, he signed broad legislation targeting new Technology.
Arati Prabhakar, Biden’s chief scientific and Technology advisor and head of the White House Office of Scientific and Technology Policy, told Wired that she and Biden tested the bot with a few jobs.
First, she claimed, they instructed it to describe a case between Delaware (the state Biden represented as a senator) and New Jersey (the home state of singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen, to whom Biden had recently received the National Medal of Arts) as if it were speaking to a first-grader. The bot immediately responded with sentences like “OK, kiddo,” Prabhakar said.
Then, she added, they requested it to prepare a legal brief for a Supreme Court issue, compose a Springsteen-style song, and create a visual of Biden’s dog, Commander, in the Oval Office.
“He was like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe it could do that,'”
Arati Prabhakar
However, his first interaction with generative AI raised concerns.
Prabhakar According to Wired, Biden later urged the team to address the possible hazards of AI, resulting in the broad executive order he signed in October. The decree mandates big technology businesses to follow specific safety criteria, alert the federal government of their activities, and share testing results.
According to Politico, Biden told his cabinet at an early October meeting that AI would affect the functioning of every department and agency. “The rest of the world is looking to us to lead the way,” he stated.