Joe Biden declares ‘I am the AI’ while pushing rules for artificial intelligence

WASHINGTON — President Biden jokingly declared “I am the AI” Friday as he pushed for regulations to govern the use of artificial intelligence.

“If any of you think I’m Abe Lincoln, blame it on the AI,” the 80-year-old president added before turning to his call for new rules.

Biden warned that unfettered AI could pose a threat “to our democracy” and noted that he in February signed an order forbidding the development of algorithms that “discriminate” based on a person’s race.

“We must be clear-eyed and vigilant about the threats emerging technologies can pose — don’t have to — but can pose to our democracy and our values,” Biden said alongside seven tech leaders at the White House.

“Companies have agreed to find ways for AI to help meet society’s greatest challenges, from cancer to climate change, and invest in education and new jobs to help students and workers prosper from the opportunities, and there are enormous opportunities of AI,” he added.

Skeptics of Biden’s push to regulate AI note prior federal efforts to rein in “disinformation” on social media, which resulted in a partisan slant in moderation decisions and the deletion of political speech and reporting that later gained broad acceptance as fact, such as the existence of documents linking Biden to his son Hunter’s international business dealings.

Biden said that he was poised to sign executive orders to regulate AI and that he plans to push for federal legislation and international rules as well.

“In the weeks ahead, I’m gonna continue to take executive action to help America lead the way toward responsible innovation,” he vowed. “And we’re gonna work with both parties to develop appropriate legislation and regulation.”

Biden added that the US would “lead — work with our allies and partners on a common international framework to govern the development of AI.”

Excitement and concern about AI has mounted over the past year with the release of sophisticated video and photo-editing tools that can produce convincing but false documentation, along with the release of the ChatGPT platform that can author a wide range of content upon request.

Biden was joined at the White House by Microsoft president Brad Smith, Google president Kent Walker, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Inflection AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, Meta president Nick Clegg, OpenAI president Greg Brockman and Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky.