New participants include IBM, data-mining company Palantir and Stability, the maker of text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, underscoring the expansion of the pledge beyond AI heavyweights such as Microsoft and Meta and OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
The new inclusions are another signal of the White House’s continued interest in AI issues, following summits with tech executives and civil rights advocates. Work is also underway on an AI executive order, and President Biden supports efforts in Congress led by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer to pass AI legislation, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the White House’s work on AI.
The White House meeting comes a day before Schumer is scheduled to meet with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and a host of other technologists and civil liberties advocates about the Senate’s plans to regulate AI. IBM and Palantir are expected to attend both the White House meeting and the summit with Schumer.
Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff, on Tuesday afternoon plans to meet with representatives from several of the companies, including Photoshop maker Adobe, AI platform Cohere and ScaleAI, which provides data services to companies including OpenAI. The conversation is expected to primarily focus on AI benefits and risks, and cover much of the same ground as the AI summit that the White House hosted with the chief executives of other large tech companies in July, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“The President has been clear: harness the benefits of AI, manage the risks, and move fast — very fast,” Zients said in a statement. “And we are doing just that by partnering with the private sector and pulling every lever we have to get this done.”
The commitments will apply to the next system released by each of the companies, the administration official said.
Dana Rao, Adobe’s executive vice president and general counsel, called the commitments an “important step” in collaboration between the government and industry.
“With a rapidly evolving technology, it is critical to have thoughtful and deep conversations between the industry and the government to ensure AI legislation and regulation supports innovation while providing essential safeguards for society and the public,” Rao said in a blog post.
