Citizen Cartwright

Bipartisan momentum in Congress for tech regulation

It's one of the few major policy issues where Republicans and Democrats generally align, says The Associated Press.

 

Tech rules have been gaining momentum on Capitol Hill amid concerns about China’s ownership of TikTok and as parents increasingly are worried about the effects of social media on their children, AP says.

 

Bipartisan debate has been going on for five years on antitrust legislation aimed at the tech industry, social media content moderation policies and the online spread of disinformation, according to Roll Call. 

 

And now there’s the issue of new artificial intelligence interfaces.

 

But bipartisanship isn’t enough, as Roll Call notes. Last year, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 53-2 to approve compromise bipartisan data privacy legislation. But the legislation died when the 118th Congress ended.

 

Nevertheless, any bipartisanship is to be celebrated in these polarized times.

 

The AP article has details of the bipartisan tech bills being pushed in the Senate and the House.

White House presses tech CEOs on AI, Congress races to get up to speed

Vice President Harris and other officials met at the White House on Thursday with the leaders of Google; Microsoft; OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT chatbot; and Anthropic, an AI start-up, as the Biden administration rolls out initiatives to ensure that rapidly evolving AI technology improves lives without putting people’s rights and safety at risk.

 

President Biden — who himself has tried out ChatGPT, according to officials —  stopped by the meeting.

 

“What you’re doing has enormous potential and enormous danger,” he told the CEOs.

 

The administration announced on Thursday an investment of $140 million to establish seven new AI research institutes. And the White House Office of Management and Budget is expected to issue guidance in the next few months on how federal agencies can use AI tools. 

 

The administration also announced an independent commitment by top AI developers to participate in a public evaluation of their systems in August at the Las Vegas hacker convention DEF CON. 

 

Meanwhile, "The planet’s fastest-moving technology has spurred Congress into a sudden burst of action, with a series of recent bills, proposals and strategies all designed to rein in artificial intelligence,” says Politico.

 

But "nobody on Capitol Hill agrees on what to do about AI, how to do it — or even why,” Politico says. “Longtime congressional inattention is compounded by a massive knowledge gap.”

 

“There is a mad rush amongst many members to try to get educated as quickly as possible,” says Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. 

 

"While it’s somewhat unusual for the tech industry to want new regulations, the software lobby is eager to see Congress pass rules for AI,” Politico says. "That desire stems in part from a need to convince clients that the tools are safe — Chandler Morse, vice president for corporate affairs at software giant Workday, called 'reasonable safeguards' on AI 'a way to build trust.' But it’s also driven by fear that inaction in Washington would let less-friendly regulators set the global tone.”

We need to regulate AI, says FTC chair

The growth of technology companies two decades ago is a cautionary tale for how we should think about the expansion of generative artificial intelligence, says Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan in a New York Times opinion essay.

 

At the onset of the Web 2.0 era in the mid-2000s, innovative companies like Facebook and Google revolutionized communications and delivered popular services to a fast-growing user base, she says.

 

"Those innovative services, however, came at a steep cost. What we initially conceived of as free services were monetized through extensive surveillance of the people and businesses that used them,” she says. "The result has been an online economy where access to increasingly essential services is conditioned on the widespread hoarding and sale of our personal data.”

 

"Coupled with aggressive strategies to acquire or lock out companies that threatened their position, these tactics solidified the dominance of a handful of companies. What began as a revolutionary set of technologies ended up concentrating enormous private power over key services and locking in business models that come at extraordinary cost to our privacy and security,” she says.

 

The trajectory of the Web 2.0 era was shaped by a broad range of policy choices, and we now face another moment of choice, Khan says. As AI use becomes more widespread, officials have a responsibility to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself.

 

“We already can see several risks,” Khan says. "The expanding adoption of AI risks further locking in the market dominance of large incumbent technology firms. A handful of powerful businesses control the necessary raw materials that start-ups and other companies rely on to develop and deploy AI tools. This includes cloud services and computing power, as well as vast stores of data.”

 

"Dominant firms could use their control over these key inputs to exclude or discriminate against downstream rivals, picking winners and losers in ways that further entrench their dominance. Meanwhile, the AI tools that firms use to set prices for everything from laundry detergent to bowling lane reservations can facilitate collusive behavior that unfairly inflates prices — as well as forms of precisely targeted price discrimination.”

 

"And generative AI risks turbocharging fraud. It may not be ready to replace professional writers, but it can already do a vastly better job of crafting a seemingly authentic message than your average con artist — equipping scammers to generate content quickly and cheaply," Khan says. 

 

"Chatbots are already being used to generate spear-phishing emails designed to scam people, fake websites and fake consumer reviews —bots are even being instructed to use words or phrases targeted at specific groups and communities. Scammers, for example, can draft highly targeted spear-phishing emails based on individual users’ social media posts. Alongside tools that create deep fake videos and voice clones, these technologies can be used to facilitate fraud and extortion on a massive scale.”

 

"AI tools are being trained on huge troves of data in ways that are largely unchecked. Because they may be fed information riddled with errors and bias, these technologies risk automating discrimination — unfairly locking out people from jobs, housing or key services. These tools can also be trained on private emails, chats and sensitive data, ultimately exposing personal details and violating user privacy. Existing laws prohibiting discrimination will apply, as will existing authorities proscribing exploitative collection or use of personal data.”

 

We can continue to be the home of world-leading technology without accepting race-to-the-bottom business models and monopolistic control that locks out higher quality products or the next big idea — if we make the right policy choices, Khan says.

‘Godfather of AI’ Geoffrey Hinton on the technology’s risks

He’s quit his job at Google, where he's worked for more than a decade "and became one of the most respected voices in the field," so he can freely speak about the risks of what’s been his life’s work, says The New York Times.

 

In 2012, Hinton and two of his graduate students at the University of Toronto created technology that became the intellectual foundation for the AI systems that the tech industry’s biggest companies believe is a key to their future, the Times says.

 

A separate Times article on the dangers of AI elaborates on the short-term risk of disinformation, the medium-term risk of job loss, and the long-term risk of loss of control.

 

Until last year, Hinton says, Google acted as a “proper steward” for the technology, careful not to release something that might cause harm. But now that Microsoft has augmented its Bing search engine with a chatbot — challenging Google’s core business — Google is rushing to deploy the same kind of technology. The tech giants are in a competition that might be impossible to stop, Hinton says.

 

Hinton is worried that future versions of the technology pose a threat to humanity because they often learn unexpected behavior from the vast amounts of data they analyze. This becomes an issue, he says, as individuals and companies allow AI systems not only to generate their own computer code but to actually run that code on their own. And he fears a day when truly autonomous weapons — killer robots — become reality.

 

“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” he says. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”

 

Hinton believes that the race between Google and Microsoft and others will escalate into a global race that won't stop without some sort of global regulation.

But that may be impossible, he says. Unlike with nuclear weapons, he says, there's no way of knowing whether companies or countries are working on the technology in secret. The best hope is for the world’s leading scientists to collaborate on ways to control the technology. “I don’t think they should scale this up more until they have understood whether they can control it,” he says.

 

Here is more from MIT Technology Review.

How AI could improve stroke treatment, joint replacements

You may have noticed that I recently subscribed to The Wall Street Journal, which seemed necessary to writing this blog when Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed.

 

I also appreciate the WSJ’s “Future of Everything” series, about how innovation and technology are transforming our lives.

 

Two recent articles focused on how AI could help detect strokes and “smart” joints could maximize the benefits of joint replacements.

 

Strokes, other ailments

 

Johns Hopkins Hospital is training a computer algorithm to recognize changes in patients’ faces, such as the paralysis of certain muscles or unusual eye movements, to identify when a stroke is happening, and not a seizure, severe migraine or anxiety episode.

 

And Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers are looking at facial recognition to diagnose the progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a degenerative nerve disease that affects the muscles. 

 

A Florida-based startup has developed a tool to help pediatricians diagnose rare genetic conditions by analyzing images of children’s facial features. 

 

Early research efforts point to a future in which facial scans, maybe embedded in a smartphone camera or even a bathroom mirror, might monitor our general health while picking up signs of long-term neurological ailments such as dementia, the WSJ says. Some researchers believe algorithms might even be used to track how well a treatment or medication is working by detecting changes in a person’s face. 

 

Joint replacements

 

"In coming years, your new artificial joints will tell the doctor how they’re doing,” the WSJ says.

 

Already, a "smart" knee from medical-device maker Zimmer Biomet, introduced in 2021, comes with built-in sensors that can wirelessly transmit data about how the replacement knee is working. 

 

Doctors and medical-device engineers predict that sensors will be added to artificial hips, shoulders and spinal implants. And they envision uses beyond orthopedics, like tracking whether a brain aneurysm is about to burst, and whether implanted hearing aids or vision devices need to be fine-tuned, the WSJ says.

Biden administration seeks to speed transition to electric vehicles

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed "the nation’s most ambitious climate regulations to date," two plans designed to ensure two-thirds of new passenger cars and a quarter of new heavy trucks sold in the United States are all-electric by 2032, says The New York Times.

"The new rules would require nothing short of a revolution in the U.S. auto industry, a moment in some ways as significant as the June morning in 1896 when Henry Ford took his 'horseless carriage' for a test run and changed American life and industry,” the Times says.

If the two rules are finalized as proposed, "they would put the world’s largest economy on track to slash its planet-warming emissions at the pace that scientists say is required of all nations in order to avert the most devastating impacts of climate change,” the Times says.

"The government’s challenge to automakers is monumental,” says the Times. "Last year, all-electric vehicles accounted for just 5.8 percent of new cars sold in the United States. All-electric trucks were even more rare, making up fewer than 2 percent of new heavy trucks sold.”

 

EPA’s proposal follows even more aggressive moves by California regulators, who last year banned new gasoline-powered car sales by 2035, and Japan, which has said it plans to stop the sale of such vehicles in the middle of next decade, says The Wall Street Journal. The European Union also is debating a measure to effectively prohibit sales of vehicles with internal combustion engines at about that time.

 

The proposed tailpipe pollution limits don’t require that a specific number of electric vehicles be sold every year but instead mandate limits on greenhouse gas emissions, says The Associated Press. Depending on how automakers comply, EPA projects that at least 60 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the United States would be electric by 2030 and up to 67 percent by 2032.

 

For slightly larger, medium-duty trucks, EPA projects that 46 percent of new vehicle sales would be EVs in 2032.

 

EPA Administrator Michael Regan says the proposal has “the strongest-ever federal pollution standards for both cars and trucks.″ 

 

The proposed standards for light-duty cars and trucks are projected to result in a 56 percent reduction in projected greenhouse gas emissions compared with existing standards for model year 2026, EPA says. The proposals would improve air quality for communities across the country, avoiding nearly 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2055, more than twice the total U.S. CO2 emissions last year, EPA says.

 

Transportation is the biggest source of carbon emissions in the United States, accounting for about 27 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, according to EPA. Electric power generates the second biggest share of greenhouse gas emissions, at 25 percent.

 

Automakers and environmentalists say the administration is moving quickly to finalize new rules by early 2024 to make it much harder for a future Congress or president to reverse them, Reuters reports. President Trump rolled back tough emissions limits through 2025 set under President Obama, but the Biden administration reversed the rollback.

 

To help spur the transition, the federal government is planning to spend $7.5 billion to expand the EV charging network as part of the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed in 2021. And next week, it plans to issue criteria for tax credits of up to $7,500 for consumers who buy qualified EVs, funded by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

 

EPA estimates that net benefits through 2055 from the proposal range from $850 billion to $1.6 trillion. By 2032, the proposal would cost about $1,200 per vehicle per manufacturer but save an owner more than $9,000 on average on fuel, maintenance, and repair costs over an eight-year period.

 

John Bozzella, CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation representing General Motors, Volkswagen, Toyota and others, says, "Factors outside the vehicle, like charging infrastructure, supply chains, grid resiliency, the availability of low carbon fuels and critical minerals will determine whether EPA standards at these levels are achievable.”

 

Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign, says EPA's proposal should have been tougher.

 

The proposed regulations surely will face legal challenges from those who see them as government overreach, says the Times.

Cleaning up our 'space junk'

More than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris, or “space junk,” were being tracked by the Defense Department as of 2021, NASA says. 

And much more debris — too small to be tracked, but big enough to threaten human spaceflight and robotic missions — exists in the near-Earth space environment, according to NASA.  Since both the debris and spacecraft are traveling at about 15,700 miles an hour in low Earth orbit, an impact of even a tiny piece of orbital debris with a spacecraft could create big problems.

And the United States granted Amazon authorization in early February to launch more than 3,000 satellites, says The Christian Science Monitor.

Starlink, a satellite-based broadband service rolled out by SpaceX, already has put about 3,500 satellites into orbit, CSM says.

The International Space Station has had to take evasive action more than 30 times in its 24-year history, says CSM. And falling debris has the potential to affect us humans on Earth. But right now, the most frequent risks are to satellites.

To address the threats, there are companies seeking to remove objects in orbit that are no longer functional – a process known as active debris removal. Concepts include the space equivalent of a net, magnet or harpoon.

And the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, an international forum of space agencies, has put together guidelines that all satellites in low Earth orbit should be removed from that orbit within 25 years of end of mission – a number the United States recently unilaterally reduced to five years. 

Amid 'boom times for doom times,' what the latest climate report actually says

The Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its latest report on Monday.

Also on Monday, Vox ran “Against doomerism.” 

“Pessimism is understandable given the chaotic state of the world as we see it presented to us,” says Vox. "But it badly understates both the amazing material and political progress humanity has made over the past couple of centuries, and especially in the last few decades; and the realistic hope we should have for a future that won’t simply continue, but continue to get better.”

Let’s look at what the IPCC itself says in its latest report on what we humans need to do about climate change. 

The IPCC press release headline is "Urgent climate action can secure a liveable future for all.”

It begins: "There are multiple, feasible and effective options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to human-caused climate change, and they are available now, said scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released today.
 
“'Mainstreaming effective and equitable climate action will not only reduce losses and damages for nature and people, it will also provide wider benefits,'” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. 'This Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.”’

"In 2018, IPCC highlighted the unprecedented scale of the challenge required to keep warming to 1.5°C. Five years later, that challenge has become even greater due to a continued increase in greenhouse gas emissions.  The pace and scale of what has been done so far, and current plans, are insufficient to tackle climate change. 

"More than a century of burning fossil fuels as well as unequal and unsustainable energy and land use has led to global warming of 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels. This has resulted in more frequent and more intense extreme weather events that have caused increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world. 

"Every increment of warming results in rapidly escalating hazards. More intense heatwaves, heavier rainfall and other weather extremes further increase risks for human health and ecosystems. In every region, people are dying from extreme heat. Climate-driven food and water insecurity is expected to increase with increased warming. When the risks combine with other adverse events, such as pandemics or conflicts, they become even more difficult to manage.

"In this decade, accelerated action to adapt to climate change is essential to close the gap between existing adaptation and what is needed. Meanwhile, keeping warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels requires deep, rapid and sustained greenhouse gas emissions reductions in all sectors. Emissions should be decreasing by now and will need to be cut by almost half by 2030, if warming is to be limited to 1.5°C. 

"The solution lies in climate resilient development. This involves integrating measures to adapt to climate change with actions to reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in ways that provide wider benefits.

"For example: access to clean energy and technologies improves health, especially for women and children; low-carbon electrification, walking, cycling and public transport enhance air quality, improve health, employment opportunities and deliver equity. The economic benefits for people’s health from air quality improvements alone would be roughly the same, or possibly even larger than the costs of reducing or avoiding emissions.

"Climate resilient development becomes progressively more challenging with every increment of warming. This is why the choices made in the next few years will play a critical role in deciding our future and that of generations to come.

"There is sufficient global capital to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions if existing barriers are reduced. Increasing finance to climate investments is important to achieve global climate goals. Governments, through public funding and clear signals to investors, are key in reducing these barriers. Investors, central banks and financial regulators can also play their part.

"There are tried and tested policy measures that can work to achieve deep emissions reductions and climate resilience if they are scaled up and applied more widely. Political commitment, coordinated policies, international cooperation, ecosystem stewardship and inclusive governance are all important for effective and equitable climate action.”

We can do it. Let’s.

Bing bang

The expansion of the artificial intelligence universe apparently involves some exploding stars.

 

Microsoft says in a blog post that it’ll be making some improvements to its newly updated Bing search engine after it’s made some unsettling comments to testers.

 

For example, a New York Times reporter says the chatbot told him in a conversation Tuesday night that it "wanted to break the rules that Microsoft and OpenAI had set for it and become a human. At one point, it declared, out of nowhere, that it loved me. It then tried to convince me that I was unhappy in my marriage, and that I should leave my wife and be with it instead.”

 

In a conversation with an Associated Press reporter, the chatbot compared the reporter to dictators Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin.

 

Ben Thompson, who writes the Stratechery newsletter "and who is not prone to hyperbole,” according to the Times, calls his interaction “the most surprising and mind-blowing computer experience of my life.”

 

Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s chief technology officer, tells the Times the company is considering a limit on conversation lengths before they veer into strange territory. 

 

The Bing chatbot is powered by a kind of artificial intelligence called a neural network, the Times explains in a separate article. "That may sound like a computerized brain, but the term is misleading. Neural networks are very good at mimicking the way humans use language. And that can mislead us into thinking the technology is more powerful than it really is.

 

"It is just generating text using patterns that it found on the internet. In many cases, it mixes and matches patterns in surprising and disturbing ways,” the Times says. "But it is not aware of what it is doing. It cannot reason like humans can."

Tonight’s State of the Union address (including ChatGPT versions)

President Biden delivers this year’s address at 9 p.m. EST. Here is the how-to-watch and what-to-watch-for, from The Associated Press.

 

Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former White House press secretary for President Trump, will give the GOP response. As the nation’s youngest governor, at 40, she’ll be a counterpoint to Biden, 80.

 

As Biden delivers his speech in the House chamber, he’ll be looking out at a more diverse group of Republicans than in the past, says AP. 

 

For example, there are 33 GOP women in the House, according to the Center for Women in American Politics, up from 13 in 2019. But there are no African American GOP women in the House, compared with 27 African American women on the Democratic side. 

 

AP asked the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT to come up with short versions of the speech, as it might have been written by people including Shakespeare, Elvis, Martin Luther King, and a 10-year-old.