Biden Administration Outlines Government ‘Guardrails’ for A.I. Tools; The New York Times, October 24, 2024

David E. Sanger, The New York Times ; Biden Administration Outlines Government ‘Guardrails’ for A.I. Tools

"President Biden on Thursday signed the first national security memorandum detailing how the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies and other national security institutions should use and protect artificial intelligence technology, putting “guardrails” on how such tools are employed in decisions varying from nuclear weapons to granting asylum.

The new document is the latest in a series Mr. Biden has issued grappling with the challenges of using A.I. tools to speed up government operations — whether detecting cyberattacks or predicting extreme weather — while limiting the most dystopian possibilities, including the development of autonomous weapons.

But most of the deadlines the order sets for agencies to conduct studies on applying or regulating the tools will go into full effect after Mr. Biden leaves office, leaving open the question of whether the next administration will abide by them...

The new guardrails would also prohibit letting artificial intelligence tools make a decision on granting asylum. And they would forbid tracking someone based on ethnicity or religion, or classifying someone as a “known terrorist” without a human weighing in.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the order is that it treats private-sector advances in artificial intelligence as national assets that need to be protected from spying or theft by foreign adversaries, much as early nuclear weapons were. The order calls for intelligence agencies to begin protecting work on large language models or the chips used to power their development as national treasures, and to provide private-sector developers with up-to-the-minute intelligence to safeguard their inventions."

Inside the White House’s desperate scramble to swat down hurricane misinformation; CNN, October 9, 2024

Priscilla Alvarez, Sean Lyngaas, Kayla Tausche and Pete Muntean, , CNN; Inside the White House’s desperate scramble to swat down hurricane misinformation

"In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, senior Biden administration officials raced to engage in a round-the-clock effort to respond to what appeared to be an unprecedented amount of misinformation circling about the storm and the federal response to it.

Meetings were quickly convened across government to try to solve for the alarming rise in false information – from claims about funds being directed to migrant services instead of recovery to allegations that survivors were only eligible for little assistance – that have in part been amplified by Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump.

“This has been a galvanizing moment for the White House and the federal government because of just the outright lying and spreading of lies,” one US official said."

Interested Parties Memo: Fighting Hurricane Helene Falsehoods with Facts; The White House, October 5, 2024

 The White House; Interested Parties Memo: Fighting Hurricane Helene Falsehoods with Facts

""Senior Advisor to the President and Communications Director Ben LaBolt, and Director of Digital Strategy Christian Tom

Under President Biden and Vice President Harris’s direction, the Administration has mobilized a robust, intensive, and whole-of-government effort to respond to the impacts of Hurricane Helene. This includes extensive pre-landfall preparations, as well as an immediate surge of additional resources and personnel to impacted communities. More than 6,400 Federal personnel are on the ground, and more than $110 million in Federal assistance has been given to survivors, with more to come. We are sparing no resource as we work to ensure communities across the Southeast have prompt access to Federal resources that will enable them to both purchase essential items and begin their road to recovery and rebuilding.

Unfortunately, as our response and recovery efforts continue, we have seen a large increase in false information circulating online related to the federal response to Hurricane Helene. A number of scam artists, bad-faith actors, and others who want to sow chaos because they think it helps their political interests are promoting disinformation about the recovery effort, including ways to access critical and live-saving resources. This is wrong, dangerous, and it must stop immediately.

Combatting misinformation and disinformation is always important – but it is especially important when responding to disasters like Hurricane Helene. In fact, disinformation after a hurricane or other natural disaster can discourage people from seeking critical assistance when they need it most. It is imperative that we encourage impacted residents to register for FEMA assistance, not discourage it, by allowing falsehoods to spread.

Leaders from across the country, including local, state, and federal elected officials in both parties, are pleading with people to stop sharing “this junk.”

1. CNN: With misinformation swirling in Hurricane Helene’s wake, officials urge residents to ‘stop this conspiracy theory junk’
2. HuffPost: North Carolina Republican Pleads To End Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories About Helene Disaster Recovery
3. The Hill: Tennessee mayor on FEMA attacks post-Helene: ‘Quit spreading those rumors’
4. WVLT: ‘A lot of misinformation’ | Gov. Lee, FEMA address donation rumors

Here are some of the falsehoods being spread online – and the facts we are fighting back with:"

New Federal Rules Aim to Speed Repatriations of Native Remains and Burial Items; ProPublica, December 8, 2023

Mary Hudetz, ProPublica; New Federal Rules Aim to Speed Repatriations of Native Remains and Burial Items

"The Biden administration has revised the rules that institutions and government agencies must follow to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act — a law long hampered by limited funding and the unwillingness of many museums to relinquish Indigenous remains and burial items.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to hold a U.S. cabinet position, said Wednesday that the regulations will “strengthen the authority and role of Indigenous communities in the repatriation process” by requiring institutions to defer more to tribes’ knowledge of their regions and histories in their decision-making about repatriations.

Thirty-three years ago, Congress passed NAGPRA to prevent grave looting and push museums to return human remains and items excavated from Native American gravesites to tribes. But the promise of repatriation that many tribal nations once saw in the law has not been fully realized, with federal data showing institutions continue to store about half of the 200,000 ancestral remains they reported holding following passage of the 1990 law.

This year, ProPublica’s Repatriation Project investigative series revealed that archaeologists and scientists at some of the nation’s top universities and museums have exploited loopholes in NAGPRA to delay or resist turning over holdings reported under the law."

Gallup poll finds most Americans give Biden administration a negative ethics score; The Hill, August 3, 2023

 ALEX GANGITANO, The Hill; Gallup poll finds most Americans give Biden administration a negative ethics score

"Americans rate the ethics of the Biden administration more negatively than positively, with only 42 percent of people giving it a positive rating, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.

The 42 percent ethics score given to the “top Biden administration officials,” in the poll’s language, is just above the 37- and 38-percent scores given to former President Trump’s top officials during his administration. The poll is the first ethics assessment from Gallup since President Biden took office.

The poll found that 34 percent of Americans find the Biden officials’ ethics standards good, and 37 percent find them poor. Among Democrats, 84 percent rated the Biden administrations’ ethics as excellent or good, while only 6 percent of Republicans gave them that rating."

Top tech firms sign White House pledge to identify AI-generated images; The Washington Post, July 21, 2023

  Cat Zakrzewski, The Washington Post; Top tech firms sign White House pledge to identify AI-generated images

"The White House on Friday announced that seven of the most influential companies building artificial intelligence have agreed to a voluntary pledge to mitigate the risks of the emerging technology, escalating the Biden administration’s involvement in the growing debate over AI regulation.]

The companies — which include Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Chat GPT-maker OpenAI — vowed to allow independent security experts to test their systems before they are released to the public and committed to sharing data about the safety of their systems with the government and academics.

The firms also pledged to develop systems to alert the public when an image, video or text is created by artificial intelligence, a method known as “watermarking.”

In addition to the tech giants, several newer businesses at the forefront of AI development signed the pledge, including Anthropic and Inflection. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. Interim CEO Patty Stonesifer sits on Amazon’s board.)"

The Biden administration is without a confirmed ethics czar; Government Executive, July 18, 2023

Eric Katz, Government Executive; The Biden administration is without a confirmed ethics czar

"The lack of a confirmed director should not hinder the Office of Government Ethics' daily operations, but Biden would be smart to pick a new permanent leader soon to signal he is serious about ethics, former agency officials said. 

Emory Rounds, a President Trump appointee whose term carried over into Biden’s tenure, stepped down July 12 when his term expired. Shelley Finlayson, chief of staff and program counsel at the ethics agency, will fill in on an acting basis. 

The agency is responsible for overseeing the ethics plans at each executive branch department and collecting and approving disclosure documents from the federal officials who are required to submit them. It occasionally issues new ethics regulations to update policies and provides guidance and reminders to employees across government."

Biden Picks Lawyers Tasked With Undoing Trump Ethics Legacy; Bloomberg Law, January 11, 2021

 Courtney Rozen, Dean Scott, Bloomberg Law; Biden Picks Lawyers Tasked With Undoing Trump Ethics Legacy 

"President-elect Joe Biden named more than 20 lawyers to his White House counsel’s office, where they will help the new president revise ethics standards and put his imprint on the federal bench.

The attorneys draw on expertise in civil rights, health, and environmental law, all topics that Biden has also said will be focal points in his administration."