White House questions impact of AI surveillance on workers

Officials in Washington, D.C. said they would hold a listening session to understand the experiences of workers and the usage of AI surveillance in the workplace.

Officials in the United States are making efforts to keep tabs on the development of artificial intelligence (AI) as new plans surface to examine workers’ experience with AI surveillance. 

According to a Reuters report, on May 23, White House officials said they would be asking workers how their employers use AI for monitoring purposes. This comes as federal investments are allocated toward the technology’s development.

Regulators in the U.S. are planning to hold a listening session to hear about AI experiences for workplace surveillance, monitoring and evaluation. Also on the call will be gig work experts, researchers and policymakers.

The forthcoming listening session comes only a few weeks after U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris invited executives from major tech companies to the White House to discuss the dangers of AI. 

In attendance were nine of the top advisers to the Biden administration in science, national security, policy and economics, along with the CEOs of OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta, among others.

Before the meeting, U.S. President Joe Biden urged tech companies to address the risks of the technology. 

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On May 4, U.S. officials released standards for key and emerging technologies, which identified eight sectors within the tech industry that could significantly impact the economy in the coming years. 

Most recently, Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAi, testified before Congress in a “historic” session that focused on the potential threats posed by generative AI.

The U.S. is not alone in forming a regulatory stance on the emerging technology. Regulators in the United Kingdom recently pledged nearly $125 million toward creating a “safe AI” task force as the country focuses on AI “readiness.”

Meanwhile, in the European Union, officials are finalizing legislation that could be one of the world’s first set of legal measures and guidelines regulating generative AI tools. The most recent deliberations on the bloc’s Artificial Intelligence Act included banning facial recognition in public spaces and predictive policing tools.

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