++Is DC doomed to make the same mistakes with AI that it made with social media? +
++Joe Biden has used ChatGPT, and he’s reportedly “fascinated” by it. That makes him a lot like most of us, who have marveled over generative AI’s ability to create words, images, audio, and video from simple prompts, since the technology became widely available to the general public in 2022. But Biden is also different from everyone because he’s the president of the United States, with the authority and the responsibility for making sure that technological advances are also safe. +
++His administration is now trying to figure out how to do that. Congress might be, too. Europe definitely is, and at a comparatively rapid pace. While the US government wants to at least appear to be considering and mitigating any potential harms from generative AI, how it will do that remains to be seen. Especially given Washington’s spotty track record when it comes to reining in Big Tech. +
++The latest entrant to the generative AI arms race is Google, which has lagged behind rival Microsoft with its generative AI-powered chatbot and search. Google announced on Wednesday that it would be integrating its AI offerings into just about all of its major products, including Google Docs. That includes Google Search, the tool that most of America uses all the time to navigate the internet. +
++AI isn’t new, and neither are attempts to regulate it. But generative AI is a big leap forward, and so are the problems or dangers it could unleash on a world that isn’t ready for it. Those include disinformation spread by convincing deepfakes and misinformation spread by chatbots that “hallucinate,” or make up facts and information. Inherent biases could cause people to be discriminated against. Millions of people might suddenly be put out of work, while intellectual property and privacy rights are bound to be threatened by the technology’s appetite for data to train on. And the computing power needed to support AI technology makes it prohibitively expensive to develop and run, leaving all but a few rich and powerful companies to rule the market. +
++We’ve been largely relying on these big technology companies to regulate themselves. That strategy hasn’t worked so well in the past because businesses only voluntarily play things safe when it’s in their own best interests to do so. But the government has a chance to get ahead of things now, rather than try to deal with problems after they come up and are far harder to solve. The government is also historically slow or unable to take on tech companies, between administrations with limited powers, courts that tend to rule in businesses’ best interests, and a Congress that can’t seem to pass any laws. +
++“Congress is behind the eight ball. If our incapacity was a problem with traditional internet platforms like Facebook, the issue is ten times as urgent with AI,” Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) told Vox. +
++With Google, Microsoft, and a host of other tech companies now rushing their AI services out to as many of their products as possible, it might be even more urgent than that. +
++The White House can move faster than Congress — and it is +
++The Biden administration has recently stepped up its ongoing efforts to ensure that AI is responsible and safe. On May 4, after several members of the Biden administration met with the CEOs of companies on the forefront of generative AI — Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI — the White House announced several actions meant to “protect people’s rights and safety” while promoting “responsible AI innovation.” Those include funding for several new research institutes, a “public evaluation” of some existing generative AI systems at DEF CON, a security conference in Las Vegas, this August, and having the Office of Management and Budget provide policy guidance for how the federal government uses AI systems. +
++This builds on the administration’s previous actions, which have ramped up alongside generative AI. Last fall’s AI Bill of Rights established a set of protections Americans should have from AI systems. According to the document, the public is entitled to safe and effective systems; it deserves protections from algorithmic discrimination and data privacy invasions; and it should be told when AI is being used and given the ability to opt out. And while these sound all well and good, they’re just recommendations, to which compliance is voluntary. +
++To a certain extent, federal agencies are already empowered to create regulations that may apply to generative AI products and enforce consequences for companies that violate them. The Biden administration has directed agencies to protect Americans from harmful AI according to their own purview. For example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission tackles issues related to employment and discrimination, and the Copyright Office and the Patent and Trademark Office are looking into if and how to apply their intellectual property rules to generative AI. +
++The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is currently asking for comments on accountability policies that would ensure AI tools are “legal, effective, ethical, safe, and otherwise trustworthy.” These, the agency says, will include “adequate internal or external enforcement to provide for accountability.” +
++And there are things agencies already have the power to do. The heads of the EEOC, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, and Federal Trade Commission recently issued a joint statement declaring that they have the authority to regulate AI within their respective spaces and that they will enforce those rules when needed. The AI Now Institute, which is run by two former AI advisers to the FTC, recently put out a report that, among other things, made the case for how competition policy can be used to keep AI companies in check. +
++“This flavor of artificial intelligence that involves massive amounts of data and massive amounts of computational power to process it has structural dependencies on resources that only a few firms have access to,” said Sarah Myers West, managing director of AI Now Institute. “Competition law is central to regulating generative AI and AI more broadly.” +
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Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
++West noted that Microsoft has already done a few questionable things to disadvantage competitors, like reportedly forbidding companies from using its Bing search index to power their own chatbots. That’s the kind of thing the FTC or the antitrust arm of the Department of Justice could potentially act on. +
++Meanwhile, FTC chair Lina Khan has indicated that she is ready and willing to use the agency’s competition and consumer protection mandates to keep AI companies in check. She recently wrote a New York Times op-ed saying that the consequences of unchecked growth of Web 2.0 should serve as an impetus for agencies to act now on AI. The FTC, she said, will be vigilant. +
++“Although these tools are novel, they are not exempt from existing rules, and the FTC will vigorously enforce the laws we are charged with administering, even in this new market,” Khan wrote. +
++The problem with the administration’s efforts here is that administrations change, and the next one may not have the same vision for AI regulations. The Trump administration, which predated the meteoric rise of generative AI, was open to some agency oversight, but it also didn’t want those agencies to “needlessly hamper AI innovation and growth” — especially not in the face of China’s 2017 vow to become the world leader by 2030. If Republicans win the White House in 2024, we’ll likely see a more hands-off, business-friendly approach to AI regulations. And even if not, agencies are still limited by what laws give them the authority to oversee. +
++The self-regulating option that always fails +
++Many federal lawmakers have learned that Big Tech and social media companies can operate recklessly when guardrails are self-imposed. But those lessons haven’t resulted in much by way of actual laws, even after the consequences of not having them became obvious and even when both parties say they want them. +
++Before generative AI was widely released, AI was still a concern for the government. There were fears, for example, about algorithmic accountability and facial recognition. The House has had an AI Caucus since 2017, and the Senate’s respective caucus dates back to 2019. Federal, state, and even local governments have been considering those aspects for years. Illinois has had a facial recognition law on its books since 2008, which says businesses must get users’ permission to collect their biometric information. Meta is one of several companies that has run afoul of this law over the years, and had to pay big fines as a result. +
++There’s plenty of reason to believe that tech companies won’t adequately regulate themselves when it comes to AI. While they often make it a point to say that they value safety, want to develop responsible AI platforms, and employ responsible AI teams, those concerns are secondary to their business interests. Responsible AI researchers risk getting fired if they speak out negatively about the products they’re investigating, or laid off if their employer needs to reduce its headcount. Google held off on releasing its AI systems to the public for years, fearing that it hadn’t yet considered all of the problems those could cause. But when Microsoft and OpenAI made their offerings widely available early this year, Google aggressively accelerated the development and release of its AI products to compete. Its chatbot, Bard, came out six weeks after Microsoft’s. +
++On the same day that Biden met with several AI CEOs in May, Microsoft announced it was expanding its new Bing and Edge, which incorporate OpenAI’s tools. They’re now more widely available and have a few new features. And while Microsoft says it’s committed to a “responsible approach” to AI, Bing’s chatbot still has issues with hallucinating. Microsoft is forging ahead and monetizing the results of its investment in OpenAI, waving off concerns by saying that Bing is still in preview and mistakes are bound to happen. +
++A week after that, Google made its announcement about integrating AI into pretty much everything, making sure to highlight some of the tools it has developed to ensure that Google’s AI products are responsible (according to Google’s parameters). +
++Congress has yet to come together on a plan for AI +
++Finally, Congress can always pass laws that would directly address generative AI. It’s far from certain that it will. Few bills that deal with online dangers — from privacy to facial recognition to AI — get passed. Big Tech-specific antitrust bills largely languished last Congress. But several members of Congress have been outspoken about the need for or desire to create laws to deal with AI. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) asked ChatGPT to write a bill that directs Congress to “focus on AI” to ensure that it’s a safe and ethical technology. He has also written that AI “freaks me out.” +
++Bennet, the Colorado senator, recently introduced the Assuring Safe, Secure, Ethical, and Stable Systems for AI (ASSESS) Act, which would ensure that the federal government uses AI in an ethical way. +
++“As the government begins to use AI, we need to make sure we do so in a way that’s consistent with our civil liberties, civil rights, and privacy rights,” Bennet said. +
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Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images
++Bennet would also like to see a new agency dedicated to regulating Big Tech, including its use of generative AI. He introduced a bill last session that would create such an agency, the Digital Platform Commission Act. But getting Congress to go for standing up a new agency is a tall order when so many lawmakers bristle at the idea of the existing agencies exerting the powers they already have. +
++Congress has a well-deserved reputation for being very much behind the times, both in understanding what new technologies are and in passing legislation that deals with new and unique harms they may cause. They’ve also been reluctant to make laws that could inhibit these companies’ growth or give any kind of advantage to another country, especially to China (which, by the way, is developing its own AI regulations). +
++Daren Orzechowski, a lawyer who often represents tech companies, said it’s important for regulations not to be so heavy-handed that they stop companies from developing technologies that may well improve society. +
++“The more prudent approach might be to set some guardrails and some guidelines versus being overly restrictive,” he said. “Because if we are overly restrictive, we may lose out on some really good innovation that can help in a lot of ways.” +
++That said, it does at least appear that some legislation will be coming out of Congress in the coming months. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced in April that he has created a “framework” for laws that deal with AI. While his position as Senate majority leader means he has control over which bills get a floor vote, the Democrats don’t have the majority needed to pass them without at least some Republicans jumping on board. And getting it past the Republican-controlled House is another story altogether. It’s also not known how much support Schumer’s plan will get within his own party; reportedly, very few members of Congress knew about this plan at all. +
++“Look at how privacy laws have progressed on the federal level,” Orzechowski said. “I think that’s probably an indicator that it’s not likely something will be passed to touch on this area when they haven’t been able to get something passed with respect to privacy.” +
++Real guardrails for generative AI may not come from the US at all. The European Union appears to have taken the lead on regulating the technology. The AI Act, which has been in the works for years, would classify AI technology by risk levels, with corresponding rules according to those risks. The European Commission recently added a new section for generative AI, including copyright rules. ChatGPT was also temporarily banned in Italy over possible breaches of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, illustrating how some of the EU’s existing regulations for online services can be applied to new technologies. +
++It all just shows how other countries are already willing and able to deal with AI’s potential for harm, while the US scrambles to figure out what, if anything, it will do. +
++DeSantis wants to beef up his “tough on China” cred. The result is a racist law. +
++This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed disturbing legislation that could fuel racial profiling of Chinese immigrants in the state. +
++The bill, which bars many Chinese citizens from buying property in Florida, is the latest in an ongoing state and federal effort from Republican lawmakers to emphasize that they are “tough on China” as geopolitical and economic tensions have grown between the two countries. Activists, however, fear that it codifies and emboldens racial profiling in the state, making it harder for Chinese immigrants and Asian Americans to buy homes. +
++The Florida policy is theoretically intended to combat the influence of the Chinese Communist Party on US affairs, according to DeSantis. However, its broad scope and focus on Chinese people who have no ties to the government has fueled concerns about who will actually be impacted by it. +
++“The reality will be that any seller, when they see a Chinese name … will think, ‘Too much trouble,’ and they’ll refuse to sell,” says Echo King, a Chinese American attorney based in Orlando, Florida, who has helped organize opposition to the legislation as part of the Florida Asian American Justice Alliance. “My community, lots of people are scared.” +
+ ++The policy allows some Chinese citizens — those with non-tourist visas — to purchase land, though they aren’t allowed to buy more than two acres, and can only do so at least five miles from military sites. That provision is still extremely restrictive, given the number of places in Florida that could be classified as military sites, activists note. Another provision in the bill bars citizens of Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria from purchasing farmland that’s within 10 miles of specific sites. It’s set to go into effect on July 1. +
++The legislation underscores how broad, xenophobic policies can result as a product of the anti-China rhetoric that has grown in the last few years. There’s much that the US should hold the Chinese government accountable for, including horrific human rights violations such as the mass internment of the Uyghur population. But the framing often used by lawmakers regarding issues like economic competition creates an “us versus them” mentality that, historically, has spurred discrimination and racial profiling of Asian Americans. +
++The spike in anti-China sentiment and policies is reminiscent of past instances when foreign policy concerns were conflated with the domestic treatment of Asian Americans. During World War II, 120,000 Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps because the US was at war with Japan, for example. +
++“It is frankly what we’ve seen throughout history, that when there are issues involving a foreign nation, there’s a backlash against the Asian American community in the United States,” John Yang, the executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, previously told Vox. +
++The threat of xenophobic policies +
++DeSantis isn’t the only lawmaker backing anti-China policies. Republicans — and some Democrats, like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — have made proposals countering China a major focus, as they’ve sought to bolster the United States’s ability to compete in manufacturing and other sectors. That’s not to say that all these proposals take the same broadly discriminatory approach as the Florida law, but that there is bipartisan interest in curbing the Chinese government’s economic and political power. +
+ ++In Texas, there’s similarly been an outcry in Asian American and immigrant communities about a bill working its way through the state legislature that would be comparable to Florida’s new law, and bar many Chinese citizens from owning property. King says she and others plan to file a lawsuit against the Florida law. +
++“You can target foreign governments, you can target [the] foreign Chinese Communist Party, but you have to separate that from the individuals that are already in this country and protected by the Constitution,” Hugh Li, president of the Austin Chinese-American Network, previously told the Texas Tribune. “This is our land too. This is our home too.” +
++Republican lawmakers and some Democrats have responded to criticism of the policies by saying they only want to target land purchases by the Chinese government. They argue allowing those aligned with the Chinese government to purchase land creates a national security risk if they’re able to establish a presence near sensitive sites like naval bases, or agricultural areas involved with the US food supply. However, the bills are so broadly written that many individuals with no affiliation to the government are likely to be affected by them as well. +
++No barriers to land ownership have passed at the federal level, though there has been discussion about bills focused on limiting purchases of farmland. House Republicans have also set up a specific select committee to scrutinize China, trafficking in xenophobic rhetoric as tensions with the country have grown. In one instance, Texas Rep. Lance Gooden questioned Chinese American Rep. Judy Chu’s loyalty to the United States, a statement that received widespread pushback from both Democrats and Republicans and that Chu has described as “outrageous” and “racist.” +
+ ++Outside of Congress, efforts like the Trump-era China Initiative by the Justice Department — which has been ended — have also led to the racial profiling of Chinese American scientists, including some who were wrongly prosecuted for alleged espionage. +
++In the past, there have been many cases in which inflammatory rhetoric led to violence and punitive policies, particularly when the US has had economic or military conflict with other countries, as is currently the case with China. The parallels with those instances are part of why there’s been such a strong reaction to the Florida and Texas bills, and why language like Gooden’s has caused such alarm. +
++After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, South Asian Americans and Muslim Americans were racially profiled domestically as the US aimed to address terrorism in the Middle East. During the Korean and Vietnam Wars, there were violent attacks on Chinatowns and Asian American people in the US. In 1982, 27-year-old Chinese American Vincent Chin was killed by two white auto workers who blamed him for the industry’s increasing competition from Japan. And during the Covid-19 pandemic, thousands of Asian Americans were scapegoated as Trump and other lawmakers used racist rhetoric to emphasize the virus’s origins in China. +
++The Asian Pacific American Caucus in Congress as well as progressive foreign policy organization Justice is Global has released guidance with recommendations of how to discuss competition and other concerns with China, while being cognizant of the impact on Asian Americans. One key takeaway is focusing any attacks on the Chinese government, rather than levying them against Chinese people as a whole. +
++“Any rhetoric and any policy that treats every single person from China as a potential agent of the government is both going to lead to these sorts of racist policies and also completely unjustified,” says Tobita Chow, the executive director of Justice is Global. “That is a myth that’s grounded in racist tropes and isn’t going to serve the purposes of US national security.” +
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++It’s a stinky ecological wonder. +
++Florida is known for many things: amusement parks, warm weather, anti-LGBTQ politics, retirees, manatees. +
++Oh, and increasingly, seaweed. +
++This spring, large blobs of a Sargassum, a kind of algae, have been washing ashore in southeast Florida. It looks bad and smells worse: As the golden algae decompose, they release hydrogen sulfide, a gas that reeks of rotten eggs. +
++Florida and other regions of the Caribbean are used to influxes of Sargassum in the spring and summer, but the invasion appears to be getting worse on average, year over year. +
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Courtesy of Brian Barnes/Sargassum Watch System/University of South Florida
++The source of this seaweed — which looks a bit like a brambly plant — is an enormous patch of Sargassum in the open ocean, known as the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt. It stretches more than 5,000 miles from West Africa to the Caribbean. And the amount of algae it contains has exploded in recent years. +
++In March, satellite data detected 13 million tons of Sargassum in the belt, a monthly record, according to data from the University of South Florida, and April saw similarly large amounts of the algae. Some scientists speculate, based on recent trends, that seaweed blooms in spring and summer may continue to grow in the years to come. +
++It’s this growing belt that inundates beaches in Florida and the Caribbean with seaweed. Ocean currents push the patch westward, and mats of algae break off and wash ashore. +
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Federica Grassi/Getty Images
++All this seaweed can be a problem for tourism, fishing, and other coastal industries, especially on Caribbean islands like Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago. In large amounts, hydrogen sulfide gas can also irritate the eyes and throat, although this is mostly a concern in enclosed spaces. +
++But there’s a flip side: Sargassum is an essential component of marine ecosystems in the open ocean, and it may even help fight climate change. +
++A golden rainforest in the open ocean +
++The stretch of ocean between Florida and West Africa may seem pretty desolate — there are few islands and a lot of open sea. Yet this region boasts a tremendous diversity of life, from young fish and crabs to turtles and seabirds, some of which are found nowhere else on Earth. +
++Sargassum is the linchpin of this open-ocean ecosystem. The seaweed floats in tangled, island-like mats that are concentrated in two main areas of the North Atlantic: the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt and, just north of it, the Sargasso Sea. +
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José Luis López Miranda et al./Frontiers in Marine Science
++The expanse of Sargassum here has been compared to a rainforest because it provides shelter and food for a variety of animals. +
++“It’s an essential habitat for so many species,” Brian Barnes, an oceanographer at the University of South Florida, said of Sargassum. “There are so many different organisms that have evolved to live in these random aggregations in the middle of the ocean.” +
++The Sargasso Sea is among the planet’s most interesting ecosystems. It’s the only sea with no land borders; it’s bounded instead by ocean currents that form a soft barrier between the sea and the rest of the ocean. +
++The sea is a nursery for jacks, tuna, mackerel, and other fish that people eat. It’s home to a number of species found only in Sargassum ecosystems, such as the Sargassum shrimp and Sargassum frogfish (which both look a whole lot like algae). The Sargasso Sea is also the only known place on Earth where American and European eels spawn. +
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Aleksei Permiakov/Getty Images
++Sargassum is a nuisance when it washes ashore, and it can smother coral reefs and harm other coastal ecosystems. Yet beached seaweed also harbors critters that provide food for shorebirds, and it can fertilize plants growing along the beach, helping reduce coastal erosion, David Die, a marine scientist at the University of Miami, told CNN. +
+
+The giant Sargassum patch is growing. Why? +
++There have likely always been floating chunks of seaweed between the Caribbean and West Africa. But in 2011, something changed and the amount of Sargassum exploded. The scale was so massive that even satellite images could see it. +
++With few exceptions, the abundance of Sargassum in this region — which became known as the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt — has been rising ever since. In the last six years, the amount of seaweed in the belt doubled compared to the previous six years, according to the University of South Florida, which tracks the blooms. +
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Mengqiu Wang et al./Science
++What’s causing this constant growth — and the 2011 tipping point — is still something of a mystery, though humans are likely partially to blame. +
++One explanation is tied to pollution. An enormous amount of fertilizer runoff and other chemicals enter rivers like the Amazon that flow into the Atlantic, where they can fuel algae blooms. Deforestation also increases the amount of nutrient-rich sediment that flows into rivers, and that sediment feeds algae, too. +
++Some researchers also suspect that rising ocean temperatures, as well as changes in wind patterns, may be behind the recent blooms. +
++Off the West Coast of Africa, cold, nutrient-rich water rises from the deep ocean, which feeds Sargassum in the eastern portion of the belt. Changes in wind patterns, possibly linked to climate change, can strengthen or weaken this coldwater upwelling. Under the right conditions, winds can also push the seaweed patch closer to the mouths of rivers, including the Amazon and Orinoco in South America, stoking the bloom even more. +
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Heather Paul/Getty Images
++A combination of these forces likely triggered the 2011 boom, and they continue to cause algae to balloon. Yet it’s still not clear how climate change will shape ocean currents and wind patterns — and what that means for the Sargassum belt. +
++Florida will be fine (at least in terms of seaweed) +
++Frightening media reports refer to a “giant blob” of seaweed barreling toward Florida. That’s not quite right. The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt is not one big blob; it’s a vast stretch of ocean spotted with clumps of algae. And it’s not like the whole thing is about to ram into Florida. +
++Plus, Florida doesn’t get the brunt of the algae that does wash ashore, Barnes said. Caribbean islands, like Turks and Caicos, Trinidad and Tobago, and Hispaniola are the places that tend to get inundated, he said, and this can cause serious issues. +
++Last year, there was so much of the seaweed in the US Virgin Islands that the territory’s governor declared a state of emergency after Sargassum clogged a desalinization plant on St. Croix. Problems like these are real, and likely to get worse if the belt keeps growing. +
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Alejandro Cegarra/Washington Post via Getty Images
++Yet there are also some benefits to this abundance, beyond the value of Sargassum for animals and commercial fish in the open ocean. Like kelp and other seaweeds, Sargassum sucks up carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, as it grows. And at least some of that carbon is stored for long periods, meaning it doesn’t decay and send carbon back into the atmosphere. +
++“Carbon sequestration can be a positive outlook of this phenomena,” authors of a 2021 study said of the growing abundance of Sargassum in the Atlantic. This is especially important, the authors added, considering that many other marine environments that remove carbon, including mangrove forests and seagrass beds, have been destroyed. (Seaweed left on the shore, however, can decay and release carbon back into the atmosphere.) +
++Entrepreneurs are also trying to turn Sargassum into useful products, such as bricks, fertilizers, and food additives. +
++That’s not to say we should all be celebrating Sargassum. It can, however, be worth recognizing that this giant bloom is not some evil, uncontrollable force threatening to destroy our vacations. It is a phenomenon humans help fuel and on which many marine creatures rely. +