AI systems from Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and others to be tested at DEFCON 31 in August

The rise of generative AI is causing many people to be concerned that they won’t behave in ethical and responsible ways. Indeed, one of Google’s highest-ranking AI researchers, Geoffrey Hinton, recently left the company so he could be free to warn the world about the potential dangers of AI.

Today, US Vice President Kamala Harris will be meeting with the CEOs of four of the leading companies in AI development: Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Google’s Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. The White House says the participants will discuss the growing use of AI and “the importance of driving responsible, trustworthy, and ethical innovation with safeguards that mitigate risks and potential harms to individuals and our society.”

The Biden Administration also announced that those four companies, along with Hugging Face, NVIDIA, and Stability AI, have all agreed to have their AI systems tested at the annual DEFCON hacking conference. DEFCON 31 is scheduled to be held in Las Vegas from August 10-13. The White House press release stated:

This independent exercise will provide critical information to researchers and the public about the impacts of these models, and will enable AI companies and developers take steps to fix issues found in those models. Testing of AI models independent of government or the companies that have developed them is an important component in their effective evaluation.

In addition, the US Office of Management and Budget will create a draft document for a policy on how the US government should use AI, and will offer it for public comment. Also, the National Science Foundation will add $140 million for funding of seven new National AI Research Institutes, which will bring the number of those groups to 25.