How can rapidly emerging #AI develop into a trustworthy, equitable force? Proactive policies and smart governance, says Salesforce.
These initial steps ignited AI policy conversations amid the acceleration of innovation and technological change. Just as personal computing democratized internet access and coding accessibility, fueling more technology creation, AI is the latest catalyst poised to unlock future innovations at an unprecedented pace. But with such powerful capabilities comes large responsibility: We must prioritize policies that allow us to harness its power while protecting against harm. To do so effectively, we must acknowledge and address the differences between enterprise and consumer AI.
Enterprise versus consumer AI
Salesforce has been actively researching and developing AI since 2014, introduced our first AI functionalities into our products in 2016, and established our office of ethical and human use of technology in 2018. Trust is our top value. That’s why our AI offerings are founded on trust, security and ethics. Like many technologies, there’s more than one use for AI. Many people are already familiar with large language models (LLMs) via consumer-facing apps like ChatGPT. Salesforce is leading the development of AI tools for businesses, and our approach differentiates between consumer-grade LLMs and what we classify as enterprise AI.
Episode Disclaimer — The views presented in this episode are those of the speaker and do not necessarily represent the views of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) or its components.
Dr. Diane DiEuliis, Ph.D. is a Distinguished Research Fellow at National Defense University (NDU — https://www.ndu.edu/), an institution of higher education, funded by the United States Department of Defense, aimed at facilitating high-level education, training, and professional development of national security leaders. Her research areas focus on emerging biological technologies, biodefense, and preparedness for biothreats. Specific topic areas under this broad research portfolio include dual-use life sciences research, synthetic biology, the U.S. bioeconomy, disaster recovery, and behavioral, cognitive, and social science as it relates to important aspects of deterrence. Dr. DiEuliis currently has several research grants in progress, and teaches in foundational professional military education.
Prior to joining NDU, Dr. DiEuliis was Deputy Director for Policy, and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Planning in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), Department of Health and Human Services. She coordinated policy and research in support of domestic and international health emergencies, such as Hurricane Sandy, and Ebola outbreaks. She was responsible for implementation of the Pandemic All-Hazards Preparedness Act, the National Health Security Strategy, and supported the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise (PHEMCE).
From to 2007 to 2011, Dr. DiEuliis was the Assistant Director for Life Sciences and Behavioral and Social Sciences in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Executive Office of the President. During her tenure at the White House, she was responsible for developing policy in areas such as biosecurity and biodefense, synthetic biology, social and behavioral science, scientific collections, and biotechnology. Dr. DiEuliis also worked to help coordinate agency response to public health issues such as the H1N1 flu.
Prior to working at OSTP, Dr. DiEuliis was a program director at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where she managed a diverse portfolio of neuroscience research in neurodegenerative diseases. She completed a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania in the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research and completed her postdoctoral research in the NIH Intramural research program, where she focused on cellular and molecular neuroscience.
Dr. DiEuliis is a National Merit Scholar, and has a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware. She is the author of over 70 publications.
Innovation For A Sustainable Global Energy Transformation — Dr. Roland Roesch, Ph.D. — Director, Innovation and Technology Centre, International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)
Dr. Roland Roesch, Ph.D. is Director, Innovation and Technology Centre (IITC), of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA — https://www.irena.org/) where he oversees the Agency’s work on advising member countries in the area of technology status and roadmaps, energy planning, cost and markets and innovation policy frameworks.
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is a leading global intergovernmental agency for energy transformation that serves as the principal platform for international cooperation, supports countries in their energy transitions, and provides state of the art data and analyses on technology, innovation, policy, finance and investment. IRENA drives the widespread adoption and sustainable use of all forms of renewable energy, including bioenergy, geothermal, hydropower, ocean, solar and wind energy in the pursuit of sustainable development, energy access, and energy security, for economic and social resilience and prosperity and a climate-proof future.
Dr. Roesch currently leads IRENA´s work on RE Innovation, Grids-Assessments and the Strategies Teams for the Power Sector Transformation and for the Gas Sector Transformation. He actively leads the development of IRENA´s work in the fields of ocean energy, blue economy and decarbonizing the shipping sector.
Before becoming Director, Dr. Roesch served as IITC Deputy Director from 2018.
Earlier this month, Reddit published a Public Content Policy stating: Unfortunately, we see more and more commercial entities using unauthorized access or misusing authorized access to collect public data in bulk, including Reddit public content. Worse, these entities perceive they have no limitation on their usage of that data, and they do so with no regard for user rights or privacy, ignoring reasonable legal, safety, and user removal requests.
In its blog post on Thursday, Reddit said that deals like OpenAI’s are part of an open Internet. It added that part of being open means Reddit content needs to be accessible to those fostering human learning and researching ways to build community, belonging, and empowerment online.
Reddit has been vocal about its interest in pursuing data licensing deals as a core part of its business. Its building of AI partnerships sparks discourse around the use of user-generated content to fuel AI models without users being compensated and some potentially not considering that their social media posts would be used this way. OpenAI and Stack Overflow faced pushback earlier this month when integrating Stack Overflow content with ChatGPT. Some of Stack Overflow’s user community responded by sabotaging their own posts.
NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy (OTPS) is asking members of the lunar community to respond to a new Lunar Non-Interference Questionnaire that will inform the development of a framework for further work on non-interference of lunar activities. There is no funding or solicitation expected to follow.
OTPS was created in November 2021 within the Office of the NASA Administrator to work transparently in collaboration across NASA and with the broader space community to provide NASA leadership with a trade space of data-and evidence-driven options to develop and shape NASA policy, strategy, and technology.
As dozens of countries and private sector companies have expressed interest in establishing lunar operations by the end of the decade, including many in the South Pole region, it will be critical to determine how to minimize interference and contamination in lunar activities. Deconfliction has been identified as an area of further work in Section 11 of the Artemis Accords and will be an area of increasing importance as the number of commercial and international actors operating on the lunar surface grows.
Working To Reduce Global Catastrophic Biological Risks — Dr. Jaime Yassif, Ph.D. — VP, Global Biological Policy and Programs, Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Dr. Jaime Yassif, Ph.D. serves as Vice President of Global Biological Policy and Programs, at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (https://www.nti.org/about/people/jaim…) where she oversees work to reduce global catastrophic biological risks, strengthen biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, and drives progress in advancing global health security.
Prior to this, Dr. Yassif served as a Program Officer at the Open Philanthropy Project, where she led the initiative on Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness. In this role, she recommended and managed approximately $40 million in biosecurity grants, which rebuilt the field and supported work in several key areas, including: development of new biosecurity programming at several leading think tanks; cultivation of new talent through biosecurity leadership development programs; initiation of new biosecurity work in China and India; establishment of the Global Health Security Index; development of the Clade X tabletop exercise; and the emergence of a new discussion about global catastrophic biological risks.
Previously, Dr. Yassif was a Science and Technology Policy Advisor at the U.S. Department of Defense, where she focused on oversight of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and East Asia security issues. During this period, she also worked on the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) at the Department of Health and Human Services, where she helped lay the groundwork for the WHO Joint External Evaluations and the GHSA Steering Group.
Dr. Yassif’s previous experience includes work with Connecting Organizations for Regional Disease Surveillance, Chatham House, NTI, the Federation of American Scientists and the Tsinghua University Institute for International Studies.
Jason Matheny is a delight to speak with, provided you’re up for a lengthy conversation about potential technological and biomedical catastrophe.
Now CEO and president of Rand Corporation, Matheny has built a career out of thinking about such gloomy scenarios. An economist by training with a focus on public health, he dived into the worlds of pharmaceutical development and cultivated meat before turning his attention to national security.
As director of Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the US intelligence community’s research agency, he pushed for more attention to the dangers of biological weapons and badly designed artificial intelligence. In 2021, Matheny was tapped to be President Biden’s senior adviser on technology and national security issues. And then, in July of last year, he became CEO and president of Rand, the oldest nonprofit think tank in the US, which has shaped government policy on nuclear strategy, the Vietnam War, and the development of the internet.
Reinforcement Learning (RL) from Human Preference-based feedback is a popular paradigm for fine-tuning generative models, which has produced impressive models such as GPT-4 and…
