White House Signs 8 More Companies to its Safe AI Pledge

Eight more U.S.-based AI developers on Tuesday added their companies to a growing list of firms that promise to develop generative AI tools responsibly, including NVIDIA, Scale AI, and Cohere.

The additions were announced by the White House, and are part of a Biden administration initiative launched four months ago when industry leaders met with them to develop universal guardrails for how generative AI would move forward. The trigger was the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which launched AI into the mainstream in November.

“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,” the White House said in a statement.

In May, Vice President Kamala Harris sat down with the heads of Alphabet, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI to discuss the responsibility of corporations and policymakers to support trustworthy, ethical innovation with safeguards that mitigate risks and potential harms.

Seven leading tech companies, including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, signed on to the White House’s pledge in July. Today’s meeting with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients was heralded by the White House as a “second round of voluntary commitments.”

“These commitments are critical to the future of AI,” Scale AI said in a blog post. “The reality is that progress in frontier model capabilities must happen alongside progress in model evaluation and safety. This is not only the right thing to do, but practical.”

“We are pleased to join these commitments and to see the White House take seriously the unique challenges, risks, and opportunities that face the enterprise AI sector,” President & COO of Cohere, Martin Kon, said, adding that the company looks forward to working with lawmakers highlighting recent meetings with government officials in the UK and Canada.

During testimony on Tuesday before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, NVIDIA Chief Scientist William Dally confirmed the computer component turned AI developer has endorsed the White House’s voluntary commitments on AI, saying that as the firm continues to deploy AI more broadly, it will continue to identify and address risks. 

In his comments to the Senate, Dally emphasized the need for balance regarding AI regulation, national security considerations, and the potential abuse of AI technology against preserving the US lead in this technology area.

“So long as we are thoughtful and measured, we can ensure safe, trustworthy, and ethical deployment of AI systems,” Dally told the senators. “Without suppressing innovation, we can spur innovation by ensuring that AI tools are widely available to everyone, not concentrated in the hands of a few powerful firms.”

Others joining NVIDIA, Scale AI, and Cohere in joining the White House pledge were Adobe, IBM, Palantir, Salesforce, and Stability AI.

The disruptive potential of AI—for good or for bad—remains at the forefront on the minds of policymakers around the world. During a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler said that new technologies could “challenge” U.S. laws, citing the use of AI-generated deepfakes in online scams and market manipulation.