President Biden’s public schedule for 07/21/2023:
| 10:00 AM Presidential Daily Brief | The President receives the Presidential Daily Briefing Closed Press |
| 1:30 PM Remarks | The President delivers remarks on Artificial Intelligence Roosevelt Room In-House Pool |
From the White House:
Voluntary commitments – underscoring safety, security, and trust – mark a critical step toward developing responsible AI
Biden-Harris Administration will continue to take decisive action by developing an Executive Order and pursuing bipartisan legislation to keep Americans safe
Since taking office, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the entire Biden-Harris Administration have moved with urgency to seize the tremendous promise and manage the risks posed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and to protect Americans’ rights and safety. As part of this commitment, President Biden is convening seven leading AI companies at the White House today – Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI – to announce that the Biden-Harris Administration has secured voluntary commitments from these companies to help move toward safe, secure, and transparent development of AI technology.
Companies that are developing these emerging technologies have a responsibility to ensure their products are safe. To make the most of AI’s potential, the Biden-Harris Administration is encouraging this industry to uphold the highest standards to ensure that innovation doesn’t come at the expense of Americans’ rights and safety.
These commitments, which the companies have chosen to undertake immediately, underscore three principles that must be fundamental to the future of AI – safety, security, and trust – and mark a critical step toward developing responsible AI. As the pace of innovation continues to accelerate, the Biden-Harris Administration will continue to remind these companies of their responsibilities and take decisive action to keep Americans safe.
There is much more work underway. The Biden-Harris Administration is currently developing an executive order and will pursue bipartisan legislation to help America lead the way in responsible innovation.
Today, these seven leading AI companies are committing to:
White House.gov. 07/21/2023.
Ensuring Products are Safe Before Introducing Them to the Public
- The companies commit to internal and external security testing of their AI systems before their release. This testing, which will be carried out in part by independent experts, guards against some of the most significant sources of AI risks, such as biosecurity and cybersecurity, as well as its broader societal effects.
- The companies commit to sharing information across the industry and with governments, civil society, and academia on managing AI risks. This includes best practices for safety, information on attempts to circumvent safeguards, and technical collaboration.
Building Systems that Put Security First
- The companies commit to investing in cybersecurity and insider threat safeguards to protect proprietary and unreleased model weights. These model weights are the most essential part of an AI system, and the companies agree that it is vital that the model weights be released only when intended and when security risks are considered.
- The companies commit to facilitating third-party discovery and reporting of vulnerabilities in their AI systems. Some issues may persist even after an AI system is released and a robust reporting mechanism enables them to be found and fixed quickly.
Earning the Public’s Trust
- The companies commit to developing robust technical mechanisms to ensure that users know when content is AI generated, such as a watermarking system. This action enables creativity with AI to flourish but reduces the dangers of fraud and deception.
- The companies commit to publicly reporting their AI systems’ capabilities, limitations, and areas of appropriate and inappropriate use. This report will cover both security risks and societal risks, such as the effects on fairness and bias.
- The companies commit to prioritizing research on the societal risks that AI systems can pose, including on avoiding harmful bias and discrimination, and protecting privacy. The track record of AI shows the insidiousness and prevalence of these dangers, and the companies commit to rolling out AI that mitigates them.
- The companies commit to develop and deploy advanced AI systems to help address society’s greatest challenges. From cancer prevention to mitigating climate change to so much in between, AI—if properly managed—can contribute enormously to the prosperity, equality, and security of all.
As we advance this agenda at home, the Administration will work with allies and partners to establish a strong international framework to govern the development and use of AI. It has already consulted on the voluntary commitments with Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, the UAE, and the UK. The United States seeks to ensure that these commitments support and complement Japan’s leadership of the G-7 Hiroshima Process—as a critical forum for developing shared principles for the governance of AI—as well as the United Kingdom’s leadership in hosting a Summit on AI Safety, and India’s leadership as Chair of the Global Partnership on AI.
Today’s announcement is part of a broader commitment by the Biden-Harris Administration to ensure AI is developed safely and responsibly, and to protect Americans from harm and discrimination.
White House.gov. 07/21/2023.
- Earlier this month, Vice President Harris convened consumer protection, labor, and civil rights leaders to discuss risks related to AI and reaffirm the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to protecting the American public from harm and discrimination.
- Last month, President Biden met with top experts and researchers in San Francisco as part of his commitment to seizing the opportunities and managing the risks posed by AI, building on the President’s ongoing engagement with leading AI experts.
- In May, the President and Vice President convened the CEOs of four American companies at the forefront of AI innovation—Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI—to underscore their responsibility and emphasize the importance of driving responsible, trustworthy, and ethical innovation with safeguards that mitigate risks and potential harms to individuals and our society. At the companies’ request, the White House hosted a subsequent meeting focused on cybersecurity threats and best practices.
- The Biden-Harris Administration published a landmark Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights to safeguard Americans’ rights and safety, and U.S. government agencies have ramped up their efforts to protect Americans from the risks posed by AI, including through preventing algorithmic bias in home valuation and leveraging existing enforcement authorities to protect people from unlawful bias, discrimination, and other harmful outcomes.
- President Biden signed an Executive Order that directs federal agencies to root out bias in the design and use of new technologies, including AI, and to protect the public from algorithmic discrimination.
- Earlier this year, the National Science Foundation announced a $140 million investment to establish seven new National AI Research Institutes, bringing the total to 25 institutions across the country.
- The Biden-Harris Administration has also released a National AI R&D Strategic Plan to advance responsible AI.
- The Office of Management and Budget will soon release draft policy guidance for federal agencies to ensure the development, procurement, and use of AI systems is centered around safeguarding the American people’s rights and safety.
President Biden’s remarks:
Student Debt Relief Tweet
From Thursday…
The Department of Education announced on 07/14/2023:
The full press release and tweet thread can be found in last Friday’s Biden Bits…
“Bidenomics” Tweets
From Thursday…
The YouTube is 26 minutes and 32 seconds long. His full remarks can be found here.
President Biden:
“Bidenomics” is just another way of saying “Restore the American Dream.”
White House.gov. 07/20/2023
President Biden:
Let me close with this. I’m not here to declare victory; we got a long way to go on the economy. But I’m here to say we have more work to do. We have a plan that’s turning things around pretty quickly.
White House.gov. 07/20/2023
President Biden:
Before the pandemic, “supply chain” wasn’t a phrase that most Americans ever thought about. But today, after delays in parts and products, everybody knows what a supply chain means and why they matter.
Our Investing in America agenda is bringing our clean energy supply chains home.
White House.gov. 07/20/2023
President Biden:
Remember the story? In order for inflation to come down, you got to cut wages for hardworking folks, you got to have unemployment up in order for inflation to come down.
Well, guess what? I never bought that. I don’t think the problem in America is that too many people are working or that people are making too much money.
Instead, we’ve focused on getting Americans into the workforce by fixing a broken supply chain, lowering the cost of product on everything from healthcare to the products we purchase.
White House.gov. 07/20/2023
President Biden:
When I took office, I set a goal of producing 30 gigawatts of offshore energy wind by 2030. Thirty gigawatts is enough to power 10 million homes, and it’ll help put us on a path to 100 percent clean energy [electricity] by 2035. By 2035, all of electricity — you turn on any — is all going to be clean energy.
White House.gov. 07/20/2023
President Biden:
We’re strengthening the American shipbuilding, supporting good union jobs, and bringing offshore wind supply chains back home.
White House.gov. 07/20/2023
From the White House:
FACT SHEET: Bidenomics is Boosting Clean Energy Manufacturing for Offshore Wind and Creating Good-Paying American Union Jobs (07/20/2023):
President Biden to visit Philly Shipyard, where union workers are building a new offshore wind vessel as part of continued manufacturing boom—while Republicans in Congress voted to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act and continue to try to block clean energy progress
President Biden’s economic agenda—Bidenomics— is fueling America’s clean energy future, creating American-made products in American factories with American workers, and attracting more than $500 billion in private sector manufacturing and clean energy investments, including in the offshore wind industry. President Biden will visit Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for a steel-cutting ceremony at the Philly Shipyard for the first offshore wind vessel of its kind to be Made in America and Jones Act compliant, employing over 1,000 workers across nine unions to build the vessel, using steel plates made by the United Steelworkers in Indiana, and generating an estimated $125 million of U.S. economic activity each year. This project is another example of how Bidenomics is growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up.
Under President Biden’s leadership, the American offshore wind industry is rapidly expanding—creating good-paying union jobs across the manufacturing, shipbuilding, and construction sectors. Since President Biden took office, companies have announced 18 offshore wind shipbuilding projects as well as investments of nearly $3.5 billion across 12 manufacturing facilities and 13 ports to strengthen the American offshore wind supply chain, representing thousands of new jobs. New data released today shows there are more than 4,100 companies in all 50 states that are looking to support the U.S. offshore wind industry, up 54% since President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act.Also today, President Biden is announcing the first-ever Gulf of Mexico offshore wind lease sale. This is the latest in a broad set of actions by the Biden-Harris Administration to build 30 gigawatts of offshore wind projects by 2030—enough to power more than 10 million homes with clean energy. A key pillar of Bidenomics, President Biden’s Investing in America agenda will help create offshore wind jobs across the country, including through tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act to support Made in America wind turbines and ships.
However, if Republicans in Congress had their way, their states would have lost out on billions of dollars in investments, jobs, and opportunity. In Pennsylvania alone, companies have committed to invest approximately $2 billion in manufacturing and clean energy investments since President Biden took office. Yet nearly every Republican Member of the House voted again to overturn the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy tax credits in April 2023—doubling down on their opposition at a time when manufacturers were investing in their state.
White House.gov. 07/20/2023.
Bidenomics is Catalyzing America’s Clean Energy and Offshore Wind Industry
As part of President Biden’s historic actions to build a clean energy economy, the Biden-Harris Administration has jumpstarted an American offshore wind industry that will strengthen the nation’s energy security, make the power grid more reliable while lowering energy costs, and reduce dangerous climate pollution. The Biden-Harris Administration’s actions to advance responsible offshore wind deployment are creating opportunities up and down the supply chain. A report released today by the Business Network for Offshore Wind shows the immense growth of the U.S. offshore wind industry since President Biden took office, with the Inflation Reduction Act catalyzing further progress:
- Since January 2021, investments in the U.S. offshore wind industry have quadrupled from $5 billion to $21.6 billion, including growth of $7.7 billion since President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act. These totals reflect investments across specific project lease areas as well as the supply chain, port and transmission infrastructure, and workforce development needed to support the industry.
- More than 4,100 companies across all 50 states have joined a supplier registry to express interest in providing components and services to the offshore wind industry—169% growth since President Biden took office and up 54% since he signed the Inflation Reduction Act.
- The U.S. offshore wind industry now includes nearly 1,500 contracts for work in the growing American market, growth of 272% since President Biden took office and up 47% since he signed the Inflation Reduction Act, with 90% of these contracts going to companies that are either U.S. headquartered or have a U.S. presence.
This nationwide growth reflects jobs up and down the offshore wind supply chain and across the country. For example, today’s steel-cutting ceremony at the Philly Shipyard launches the construction of the Acadia, the first-ever Jones Act compliant vessel for offshore wind subsea rock installation—a contract that was announced as a direct result of the Administration’s clean energy agenda. This vessel will be crewed by American mariners and take rocks from American quarries to protect the foundations of offshore wind projects that produce American clean energy. Additional supply chain progress includes:
White House.gov. 07/20/2023.
- New and expanded ports and manufacturing facilities: Today the Department of Energy (DOE) published an updated map of offshore wind supply chain investments announced just since President Biden took office, including nearly $3.5 billion across 12 manufacturing facilities and 13 ports—representing major new economic opportunities across not just the East Coast, but also in the Midwest and along the Gulf of Mexico and West Coast. Under President Biden, the Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) has awarded more than $100 million for port projects to support offshore wind development, through the Port Infrastructure Development Program expanded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
- Vessel construction across multiple states: Since President Biden took office, companies have also announced investments to build 18 offshore wind vessels across states including Florida, Louisiana, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. Last year, MARAD announced the designation of offshore wind vessels as Vessels of National Interest for priority consideration under the Federal Ship Financing Program. Since then, MARAD has received and advanced reviews of applications for a variety of offshore wind vessel types.
- Steel manufacturing boosts to support offshore wind industry: Recent announcements include an investment of $145 million to upgrade a steel facility in Mingo Junction, Ohio—following previously announced upgrades of $260 million for a steel plate mill in Baytown, Texas—to serve the offshore wind industry and the broader clean energy industry; a new advanced component steel facility in Baltimore that will construct and assemble offshore wind components using steel prefabricated at Maryland facilities; and an additional contract for a facility in western New York to provide specialized structural steelwork for the Revolution Wind and South Fork Wind projects.
Earlier this year at the International Offshore Wind Partnering Forum in Baltimore, White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi outlined ten ways the Administration is making progress toward the goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. Recent progress made by the Biden-Harris Administration toward this goal includes:
White House.gov. 07/20/2023.
- New Lease Areas: Today the Department of the Interior (DOI) is issuing the final sale notice for the first-ever offshore wind lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico, which will take place on August 29. This historic sale—with enough clean energy potential to power almost 1.3 million homes—will include one lease area of 102,480 acres offshore Lake Charles, Louisiana, and two lease areas totaling nearly 200,000 acres offshore Galveston, Texas. This sale will follow the Administration’s offshore wind sales in the New York Bight, Carolina Long Bay, and northern and central California, as well as yesterday’s announcement that DOI’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has completed another step in reviewing a potential offshore wind research lease in the Gulf of Maine.
- Efficient and Responsible Permitting: Earlier this week, BOEM completed environmental analysis of the proposed Revolution Wind project offshore Rhode Island. If approved, it could power more than 300,000 homes with clean energy. This permitting milestone follows BOEM’s final construction approval earlier this month for the nation’s third large-scale offshore wind project, Ocean Wind 1 off the coast of New Jersey, which is expected to create more than 3,000 good-paying jobs. Other recent progress includes draft Environmental Impact Statements for six additional projects: Empire Wind, Sunrise Wind, Coastal Virginia Wind (CVOW), New England Wind, SouthCoast Wind, and Atlantic Shores South. In total, BOEM and cooperating agencies are on track to complete reviews of at least 16 project plans by 2025, representing more than 27 gigawatts of clean energy. The Administration is holding projects to high standards for community engagement and environmental protection, including work by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to ensure protection of coastal and marine resources, and requiring offshore wind projects to adopt extensive monitoring and mitigation measures that reduce the potential for impacts to protected species.
- Construction Milestones: The nation’s first two large-scale offshore wind projects, approved by the Biden-Harris Administration, are both being built by union labor and achieved “steel in the water” by starting to install foundations last month. These projects will provide a wide range of benefits. For example, Vineyard Wind offshore Massachusetts will create enough clean electricity to power 400,000 homes, save customers $1.4 billion on their utility bills over 20 years, and reduce climate pollution by more than 1.5 million metric tons each year—the equivalent of taking 325,000 gas cars off the road—while creating 3,600 good-paying jobs. South Fork Wind offshore New York is using high-tech cables made in Charleston, South Carolina at a new factory, an electrical substation engineered in Kansas and fabricated in Texas, and a service operations vessel being built at shipyards in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, with components sourced from across 34 states.
Go Team Tweet
From Friday…
The video “clip” is 5 seconds long.
President Biden (all caps captioned text): TODAY’S GAME DAY. GO TEAM USA. YOU’RE GOING TO DO THIS.
This is an Open Thread.
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