Clifford Chance

On November 16, 2023, we published a blog titled "What businesses need to know (for now) about the Biden Executive Order on AI", where we summarized President Joe Biden's Executive Order on the Safe, Secure and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence (EO) in a global context and offered practical recommendations for business use.  This blog focuses on the safety and security aspects of the EO and similarly, seeks to offer practical guidance and perspective.

Although the EO is broadly framed across eight general areas, the Section titled "Ensuring the Safety and Security of AI Technology" contains the EO's arguably most specific and technical requirements.  While the Section mandates the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and other agencies to take actions with direct impact on the Federal Government, it also imposes requirements on and impacts specific businesses:

• Companies developing or "demonstrating an intent to develop" potential dual-use foundation models
• Organizations and individuals that acquire, develop, or possess a potential large-scale computing cluster
• United States Infrastructure as a Service Providers and foreign resellers of their products
• Critical infrastructure owners and operators
• Financial institutions
• Providers of synthetic nucleic acid sequences, agencies that fund life sciences research and other life sciences stakeholders
• Businesses across all industries

Read the full PDF briefing where we summarize key requirements and recommended next steps for specific businesses.

As we wrote in our first blog, we believe that the EO represents a meaningful step in the regulation of AI technologies as it aims to advance a comprehensive framework for the safe, secure, and trustworthy use of AI. 

Businesses are well advised to actively monitor the EO and related updates and developments and to take proactive steps to understand and comply with the evolving requirements.

Clifford Chance and Artificial Intelligence

Clifford Chance is following AI developments very closely and will be conducting subsequent seminars and publishing additional articles on new AI laws and regulations.  If you are interested in receiving information from Clifford Chance on these topics, please reach out to your usual Clifford chance contact or complete this preferences form.

Clifford Chance was the only law firm that participated as a partner in the recent AI Fringe, which brought together civil society, academic, commercial, advocacy and government stakeholders in London in October 2023 – all the sessions can be found here.

Clifford Chance has also recently published an insightful report on "Responsible AI in Practice", which examines public attitudes to many of the issues discussed in this article.