![United States President Joe Biden has signed an executive regulating AI [Brendan Smialowski/AFP]](/Uploads/Images/News/2023/10/Image-2025-20231031101227.jpeg)
United States President Joe Biden has issued a sweeping executive order to regulate the development of artificial intelligence (AI) amid growing concern about its potential impact on everything from national security to public health.
“To realise the promise of AI and avoid the risk, we need to govern this technology,” Biden said on Thursday. “In the wrong hands, AI can make it easier for hackers to exploit vulnerabilities in the software that makes our society run.”
The executive order includes a provision that developers of the most powerful AI models must notify the government of their work and share safety test results.
It also calls on the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish “rigorous standards” for testing AI prior to its release, the Department of Commerce to develop guidelines for identifying AI-generated content, and agencies funding “life science projects” to establish “strong new standards of biological synthesis screening” to ensure AI cannot engineer biohazards.
Biden also called on Congress to pass data privacy legislation and for the Department of Justice to address “algorithmic discrimination” among landlords and federal benefits programmes.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed hailed the measures as “the strongest set of actions any government in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security and trust” and the “next step in an aggressive strategy to do everything on all fronts to harness the benefits of AI and mitigate the risks”.
India’s economy will become carbon neutral by the year 2070, the country’s prime minster has announced at the COP26 climate crisis summit in Glasgow. The target date is two decades beyond what scientists say is needed to avert catastrophic climate impacts. India is the last of the world’s major carbon polluters to announce a net-zero target, with China saying it would reach that goal in 2060, and the United States and the European Union aiming for 2050.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
A crucial U.N. conference heard calls on its first day for the world's major economies to keep their promises of financial help to address the climate crisis, while big polluters India and Brazil made new commitments to cut emissions. World leaders, environmental experts and activists all pleaded for decisive action to halt the global warming which threatens the future of the planet at the start of the two-week COP26 summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow on Monday. The task facing negotiators was made even more daunting by the failure of the Group of 20 major industrial nations to agree ambitious new commitments at the weekend.