White House Framework for AI Regulation to Set the Stage for Congress

President Trump has released a framework for AI regulation for Congress.  The Press Release states:

The Trump Administration is committed to winning the AI race to usher in a new era of human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security for the American people. Achieving these goals requires a commonsense national policy framework that both enables American industry to innovate and thrive and ensures that all Americans benefit from this technological revolution.

The Administration recognizes that some Americans feel uncertain about how this transformative technology will affect issues they care about, like their children’s wellbeing or their monthly electricity bill. These issues, along with other emerging AI policy considerations, require strong Federal leadership to ensure the public’s trust in how AI is developed and used in their daily lives.

Today, the Trump Administration is demonstrating that leadership by issuing a comprehensive national legislative framework  that addresses the most pressing policy topics that AI presents. This framework addresses six key objectives:

1. Protecting Children and Empowering Parents: Parents are best equipped to manage their children’s digital environment and upbringing. The Administration is calling on Congress to give parents tools to effectively do that, such as account controls to protect their children’s privacy and manage their device use. The Administration also believes that AI platforms likely to be accessed by minors should implement features to reduce potential sexual exploitation of children or encouragement of self-harm.
2. Safeguarding and Strengthening American Communities: AI development should strengthen American communities and small businesses through economic growth and energy dominance. The Administration believes that ratepayers should not foot the bill for data centers, and is calling on Congress to streamline permitting so that data centers can generate power on site, enhancing grid reliability. Congress should also augment Federal government ability to combat AI-enabled scams and address AI national security concerns.
3. Respecting Intellectual Property Rights and Supporting Creators: The creative works and unique identities of American innovators, creators, and publishers must be respected in the age of AI. Yet, for AI to improve it must be able to make fair use of what it learns from the world it inhabits. The Administration is proposing an approach that achieves both of these objectives, enabling AI to thrive while ensuring Americans’ creativity continues propelling our country’s greatness.
4. Preventing Censorship and Protecting Free Speech: The Federal government must defend free speech and First Amendment protections, while preventing AI systems from being used to silence or censor lawful political expression or dissent. AI cannot become a vehicle for government to dictate right and wrong-think. The Administration is proposing guardrails to ensure that AI can pursue truth and accuracy without limitation.
5. Enabling Innovation and Ensuring American AI Dominance: The Administration is  calling on Congress to take steps to remove outdated or unnecessary barriers to innovation, accelerate the deployment of AI across industry sectors, and facilitate broad access to the testing environments needed to build and deploy world-class AI systems.
6. Educating Americans and Developing an AI-Ready Workforce: The Administration wants American workers to participate in and reap the rewards of AI-driven growth, encouraging Congress to further workforce development and skills training programs, expanding opportunities across sectors and creating new jobs in an AI-powered economy.

Importantly, this framework can succeed only if it is applied uniformly across the United States. A patchwork of conflicting state laws would undermine American innovation and our ability to lead in the global AI race.

The Federal government is uniquely positioned to set a consistent national policy that enables us to win the AI race and deliver its benefits to the American people, while effectively addressing the policy challenges that accompany this transformative technology. The Administration looks forward to working with Congress in the coming months to turn this framework into legislation that the President can sign.

$500 Million Dollar Verdict Against Oculus

Corporate Counsel (John Council with Texas Lawyer) has just announced that a Dallas, Texas jury has awarded $500 million against Facebook owned Oculus to ZeniMax Media in a copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation case.  Interestingly, the article notes that Mark Zuckerberg testified that Facebook only "had just one weekend to conduct a due diligence before completing the deal."  I bet that was a very, very busy weekend for some lawyers.  Whither "Facebook's" virtual reality technology?  It'll be interesting to see how the appeals work out. Please see the article for more information. 

How the Government Can Save Money: Pirate Software

The Washington Post reported that the U.S. Army recently was sued for copyright infringement by breaching a license agreement for software—which the U.S. Army apparently did.  Okay, so that is government not at its best.  The silver lining for the U.S. Army is that the copyright owner settled for $50 million--$130 million less than it would have cost the government to license the software.   The silver lining for the copyright owner is an unexpected check for $50 million and, I would hope, a lot more business.  The nice message for the rest of us is that the U.S. government can hire folks that can create software that works well. 

Here is a portion of the complaint:

In March 2009, Apptricity inadvertently learned that the Army may have been using more Apptricity software than that for which it had procured licenses.   Apptricity employees attended a PD TIS Strategic Capabilities Planning Meeting held March 3-5, 2009 in Richmond, Virginia, where the U.S. Army Program Director stated that the Army was deploying thousands of devices with the Apptricity software.

Anyone need an auditor?

An Interesting Idea: Business Software Alliance Bounty System for Policing and Enforcing IP

The Business Software Alliance wants you!  BSA is offering an End User Reward Program.  Basically, if you report “software piracy” to the BSA, and the BSA investigates and determines piracy exists then you may receive an award.  The BSA defines piracy as: “Unauthorized copying or distribution of copyrighted software; Purchasing one single copy of software and installing it on multiple computers; and Copying, downloading, sharing, selling or installing multiple copies onto personal or business computers is software theft.”  If you submit a piracy report to the BSA, your information is apparently kept confidential.  If you plan to participate, I suggest you read the terms carefully.  Here is the data on award fees which is apparently calculated based on settlement amount:

Reward Payment Guidelines
Settlement paid by Company	Potential Reward payment
$15,000 - $100,000	Up to $5,000
$100,001 - $200,000	Up to $10,000
$200,001 - $400,000	Up to $20,000
$400,001 - $600,000	Up to $30,000
$600,001 - $800,000	Up to $40,000
$800,001 - $1,000,000	Up to $50,000
$1,000,001 - $2,000,000	Up to $100,000
$2,000,001 - $3,000,000	Up to $150,000
$3,000,001 - $5,000,000	Up to $250,000
$5,000,001 - $10,000,000	Up to $500,000
$10,000,001 - $15,000,000	Up to $750,000
Over $15,000,000	Up to $1,000,000

Is this a good idea?  Are there other similar programs?