Don't Worry About the Vase

Following up on the Biden Executive Order on AI, the White House has now issued an extensive memo outlining its AI strategy. The main focus is on government adaptation and encouraging innovation and competitiveness, but there’s also sections on safety and international governance. Who knows if a week or two from now, after the election, we will expect any of that to get a chance to be meaningfully applied. If AI is your big issue and you don’t know who to support, this is as detailed a policy statement as you’re going to get.

We also have word of a new draft AI regulatory bill out of Texas, along with similar bills moving forward in several other states. It’s a bad bill, sir. It focuses on use cases, taking an EU-style approach to imposing requirements on those doing ‘high-risk’ things, and would likely do major damage to the upsides of AI while if anything making the important downsides worse. If we want to redirect our regulatory fate away from this dark path in the wake of the veto of SB 1047, we need to act soon.

There were also various other stories, many of which involved OpenAI as they often do. There was a report of a model called ‘Orion’ in December but Altman denies it. They’re helping transcribe lots of medical records, and experiencing technical difficulties. They disbanded their AGI readiness team. They’re expanding advance voice mode. And so on.

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