All US federal agencies will now be required to have a senior leader overseeing all AI systems they use, as the government wants to ensure that AI use in the public service remains safe, The Verge reported.

According to The Verge, Vice President Kamala Harris announced the new Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance in a briefing with reporters and said that agencies must also establish AI governance boards to coordinate how AI is used within the agency. Agencies will also have to submit an annual report to the OMB listing all AI systems they use, any risks associated with these, and how they plan on mitigating these risks.

“We have directed all federal agencies to designate a chief AI officer with the experience, expertise, and authority to oversee all AI technologies used by that agency, and this is to make sure that AI is used responsibly, understanding that we must have senior leaders across out government, who are specifically tasked with overseeing AI adoption and use,” Harris told reporters.

The chief AI officer does not necessarily have to be a political appointee, though it depends on the federal agency’s structure. Governance boards must be created by the summer.

ArsTechnica reported the White House has announced the “first government-wide policy to mitigate risks of artificial intelligence (AI) and harness its benefits.” To coordinate these efforts, every federal agency must appoint a chief AI officer with “significant expertise in AI.”

Some agencies have already appointed chief AI officers, but any agency that has not must appoint a senior official over the next 60 days. If an official already appointed as a chief AI officer does not have the necessary authority to coordinate AI use in the agency, they must be granted additional authority or else a new chief AI officer must be named.

Ideal candidates, the White House recommended, might include chief information officers, chief data officers, or chief technology officers, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) policy said. 

As chief AI officers, appointees will serve as senior advisors on AI initiatives, monitoring and inventorying all agency uses of AI. They must conduct risk assessments to consider whether any AI uses are impacting “safety, security, civil rights, civil liberties, privacy, democratic values, human rights, equal opportunities, worker well-being, access to critical resources and services, agency trust and credibility, and market competition,” the OMB said.

Engadget reported that Vice President Kamala Harris said, “I believe that all leaders of the government, civil society, and the private sector have a moral, ethical and societal duty to make sure that artificial intelligence is adopted and advanced in a way that protects the public from harm while ensuring everyone is able to enjoy its benefits.”

In my opinion, it sounds like the use of AI within the federal government is going to be something that is very closely looked at. Ideally, the AI officers should be people who really know what they are doing.

The United States, Britain and more than a dozen other countries on Sunday unveiled what a senior U.S. official described as the first detailed international agreement on how to keep artificial intelligence safe from rogue actors, pushing for companies to create AI systems that are “secure by design,” Reuters reported.

In a 20-page document unveiled Sunday, the 18 countries agreed that companies designing and using AI need to develop and deploy it in a way that keeps customers and the wider public safe from misuse.

According to Reuters, the agreement is non-binding and carries mostly general recommendations such as monitoring AI systems for abuse, protecting data from tampering and vetting software suppliers.

Still, the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly, said it was important that so many countries put their names to the idea that AI systems needed to put safety first.

The Hill reported that the United States, along with 17 other countries, unveiled an international agreement that aims to keep artificial intelligence (AI) systems safe from rogue actors and urges providers to follow “secure by design principles.”

According to The Hill, the 20-page document, jointly published Sunday by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the United Kingdom’s National Security Centre, provides a set of guidelines to ensure AI systems are built to “function as intended” without leaking sensitive data to unauthorized users.

Other countries features in the agreement include Australia, Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Nigeria, Poland, and Singapore.

Last month, the Biden administration issued a sweeping executive order on AI focused on managing the risks of AI. The order includes new standards of safety, worker protection principles, along with directing federal agencies to accelerate the development of techniques so AI systems can be trained while preserving the privacy of training data.

iPhoneInCanada reported about the guidelines for artificial intelligence systems. The guidelines are divided into four key areas reflecting the stages of the AI system development life cycle. It’s pretty broad without anything specific:

Secure Design: This section focuses on the design stage, covering risk understanding, threat modeling and considerations for system and model design.

Secure Development: Guidelines for the development state include supply chain security, documentation, and management of assets and technical debt.

Secure Deployment: This stage involves protecting infrastructure and models, developing incident management processes, and ensuring responsible release.

Secure Operation and Maintenance: Post-deployment, this section provides guidance on logging and monitoring, update management, and information sharing.

In my opinion, it makes sense for there to be specific guidelines on how AI is used. The guidelines could be used by various countries, and should include protections for users – without leaking sensitive data to other users.