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AI Government Technology

Trump Signs Another Executive Order on Governmental AI Development (zdnet.com) 62

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that aims to guide how federal agencies adopt artificial intelligence (AI) as part of efforts to build public trust in the government using this technology. From a report: The order itself directs federal agencies to be guided by nine principles when designing, developing, acquiring, and using AI. These principles emphasise that AI use by federal agencies be lawful; purposeful and performance-driven; accurate, reliable, and effective; safe, secure, and resilient; understandable; responsible and traceable; regularly monitored; transparent; and accountable. To implement these principles, the order directs the Office of Management and Budget to create a roadmap by the end of May 2021 for how the government will better support the use of AI. This roadmap will include a schedule for engaging with the public and timelines for finalising relevant policy guidance. The order also calls on agencies to continue to use voluntary consensus standards developed with industry participation. "This order recognises the potential for AI to improve government operations, such as by reducing outdated or duplicative regulations, enhancing the security of federal information systems, and streamlining application processes," Trump said in a statement. Federal agencies will also be required to prepare an inventory of AI use cases, as well as review and assess these use cases for consistency. The General Services Administration, meanwhile, has been directed to establish an AI track within the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to attract experts from industry and academia to work within agencies to further the design, development, acquisition, and use of AI in government.
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Trump Signs Another Executive Order on Governmental AI Development

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Trump signing stuff that makes sense? Did I wake up in an alternate dimension?

    • Happens once in a blue moon. I'm honestly surprised he doesn't appear to have done anything to empower technoracism / prevent testing for racial bias. which would've been in line with what he's done on the 1619 project and anti-racism training for government employees. Maybe this bill didn't cross Stephen Miller's desk.

      He also funded vaccine development in the middle of a pandemic, like any leader who wasn't a total shitbird would have done without a second thought, so all glory for any vaccine development

    • Trump writes his own Tweets. We all know the kind of stuff he says on Twitter.

      The laws he's signed, including EOs, aren't written by him and generally have been pretty good. Not that I agree with all of them, of course, but pretty good. The economic results of the policies he signed (but did not write!) were of course incredible, until COVID fucked everything up.

    • It does sound reasonably sane, for a wonder. It is still grotesque Executive overreach to create new laws. The Congress and/or Judiciary need to stomp down hard on executive orders.

  • by fyngyrz ( 762201 )

    So, they must be "understandable"... well, that leaves NN's out of it, inasmuch as what they will do once trained isn't usually predictable except statistically.

    Back to algorithms, then...

    • Understanding them statistically is sufficient to claim understanding, at least as the word is commonly used. Nobody has omniscience, so some percentage of certainty is considered understanding.

      What's more interesting here IMO than some substanceless rules on AI is that this is something better served by legislation than an executive order, so it's yet another senseless EO from the guy who has issued the most EOs in history, and who complained endlessly about the last guy's EOs.

      • by Rhipf ( 525263 )

        so it's yet another senseless EO from the guy who has issued the most EOs in history, and who complained endlessly about the last guy's EOs.

        But isn't that Trump's typical MO. He also complained about Obama playing golf all the time and it turns out that he played WAY more golf while in office than Obama ever did. At least Obama didn't gain financially by playing on his own golf courses.
        https://www.forbes.com/sites/n... [forbes.com]
        https://thegolfnewsnet.com/gol... [thegolfnewsnet.com]
        https://trumpgolfcount.com/ [trumpgolfcount.com]
        https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/25... [cnn.com]

        • by kenh ( 9056 )

          When Obama golfed, he had all the same expenses as Trump, you're just upset that trump owned the golf courses he visited? Seriously?

          Were you upset when Biden charged the secret service rent to use his pool house to provide him security? I bet you were.

          https://www.seattletimes.com/n... [seattletimes.com]

          To their credit, the Clintons did not charge the secret service rent:

          https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch... [snopes.com]

          For every additional dollar Trump collected by golfing at his own course, he likely lost money when they kept other golfers o

          • "When Obama golfed, he had all the same expenses as Trump,"

            He wasn't personally enriching himself through the office, which is illegal. And he didn't do it as often either, though Trump certainly complained about how often he golfed.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by DavenH ( 1065780 )
      Yup, several of these principles are in conflict; they require unavoidable trade-offs. You cannot fit a high-entropy data manifold with an easily scrutinized ML model, because these manifolds are themselves too complex to understand. You can readily understand a single regression line, but can you understand 4 billion non-linear regressions acting in concert?

      The Decision Tree is held as the "explainable" ML model, but suppose to meet the accuracy requirements, your system needs a random forest of 1024 tree

      • For reference, human decision-making is unreliable, inscrutable, and untraceable.

        I came here to make a similar point. This effectively says, "Don't make, buy, or deploy good AI."

        Obviously Trump didn't come up with this idea and write the text. The big question is who did, and what was their goal?

    • ~fyngyrz

      So, they must be "understandable"

      Nice catch of a qualifier that's likely a conflation of TOSs. This "order" (I'm sorry, sir, but this is an Arby's) is a lurch for relevancy to run again when a nearly unworkable compromise will still be headlines four years from now.

    • what they will do once trained isn't usually predictable except statistically.

      The same is true of humans.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      And "traceable". This is the reason I believe Factor Tables (see my sig below) may be better than NN's for domains that require traceability and explanations of results. They are less "automatic" than NN's, but provide the necessarily transparency of computations and worker task regimentation.

      NN trial runs can still be useful to determine how best to split up tasks in to subtasks (such as the filter layers), but once that's determined, factor table principles can manage these layers and sub-units better bec

  • by jimtheowl ( 4200185 ) on Friday December 04, 2020 @10:39AM (#60793982)
    As people are getting increasingly tired of being blocked by CAPTCHA/reCAPTCHA for ever longer periods of time for the sake of training AI, the makers of glassholes have to make sure that states laws are on the side of business rather than people.

    From the guidance"According to the guidance, the idea is to ensure that agencies do not introduce regulations and rules that "hamper AI innovation and growth"."

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-... [whitehouse.gov]

    https://www.techradar.com/news... [techradar.com]

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/... [zdnet.com]
    • As people are getting increasingly tired of being blocked by CAPTCHA/reCAPTCHA for ever longer periods of time for the sake of training AI

      Try Leisure Suit Larry at age 8, or so. Geesh.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • According to Republicans, executive orders are both illegal and un-constitutional.

    But I guess when you have the power to do something about these illegalities it's only worth speaking up about it when the other guy does it.

    • No, it is NOT the position of Republicans that "executive orders are both illegal and un-constitutional" and it has NEVER been the position of Republicans. ALL presidents in US History have used executive orders. You apparently lack the ability to notice the DETAILS of any argument and possibly do not understand what an "executie order" IS.

      Here's what an executive order is:

      In the USA we have one branch of government (the legislative branch, which is the congress) that writes the bills and provides the fundi

      • No, it is NOT the position of Republicans that "executive orders are both illegal and un-constitutional" and it has NEVER been the position of Republicans.

        More bullshit. Here you go [foxnews.com].

        "We think we have standing better than any other state to be able to assert this claim against the president," [Governor] Abbott told Fox. "We have a president who feels completely unrestrained by the Constitution of America."

        Sheriff Joe Arpaio, of Arizonaâ(TM)s Maricopa County, has already filed a similar suit and called Obamaâ(TM)s moves "unconstitutional."

        And another [mcclatchydc.com].

        "The presidentâ(TM)s decision to bypass Congress and grant amnesty to millions of unlawful immigrants is unconstitutional and a threat to our democracy," McCaul said at the time.

        And another [wjtv.com].

        WASHINGTON (MEDIA GENERAL) - Republican leaders rejoiced on Tuesday as the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will consider the case against President Obamaâ(TM)s executive action to shield 4 million illegal immigrants from deportation.

        "Pres. Obama's executive amnesty is unconstitutional. I hope #SCOTUS upholds the 5th Circuitâ(TM)s decision," tweeted House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.)

        And another [washingtontimes.com].

        "His first impulse is always to take rights away from law-abiding citizens, and itâ(TM)s wrong," Mr. Bush said on "Fox News Sunday.â "And to use executive powers he doesnâ(TM)t have is a pattern that is quite dangerous. Itâ(TM)s not a surprise that people donâ(TM)t believe that our government is working on their behalf anymore when you have a president that recklessly uses executive authority that the Constitution doesn't provide him."

        And another [ibtimes.com].

        Many of the Republican presidential candidates lashed out at President Barack Obama for his use of executive orders during Thursday night's debate. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that if he is elected president, he would repeal all of President Barack Obama's "unconstitutional" executive orders on day one.

        Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Donald Trump also criticized the president, with Bush saying the orders were "illegal" and Trump saying executive orders were not how the president was supposed to operate. This is a common concern about Republicans, who have frequently complained that Obama has abused his executive power.

        Rubio: On my first day of office we will repeal all of Obamas unconstitutional executive orders. #GOPDebate — Katie Watson (@kathrynw5) January 15, 2016

        Would you like to try again?

        • You didn't actually read the quotes you copied, did you? Because if you had, there is a teeny tiny chance that you would have noticed that you were making his point for him.

          Which isn't to say that you couldn't have found better examples of quotes that would, on their face, seem to support your theory. Those quotes are certainly out there - so many, in fact, that I'm amazed that you only managed to find a single example, and that one is questionable because...

          When people talk about the same topic often, th

        • You saved me a bunch of time looking for links of Republicans condemning illegal executive orders (orders by Obama to executive branch employees which did NOT tell them how to implement immigration laws, but actually told them to NOT enforce those laws). The Obama actions you referred to are exactly the sort the Republicans DO oppose precisely because they actually ARE unconstitutional (in the plain textual sense, not in the sense of some particular judge's ruling).

          When Richard Nixon was in office, the Dem

  • Extremely unethical person in almost every way he conducts himself. Yet he's trying to tell the government how to be ethical. Good luck with that.

  • As stated, these seem reasonable.
    What more principles that you would add?

    These 9 principles of federal AI use would be:
    1. lawful
    2. purposeful and performance-driven
    3. accurate, reliable, and effective
    4. safe, secure, and resilient
    5. understandable
    6. responsible and traceable
    7. regularly monitored
    8. transparent
    9. accountable
    . . . your input . . .

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