especially important in critical fields like healthcare, financial services, education, housing, law, and transportation, where mistakes by or misuse of AI could harm patients, cost consumers or small businesses, or jeopardize safety or rights. At the same time, my Administration will promote responsible uses of AI that protect consumers, raise the quality of goods and services, lower their prices, or expand selection and availability.
(f) Americans’ privacy and civil liberties must be protected as AI continues advancing. Artificial Intelligence is making it easier to extract, re-identify, link, infer, and act on sensitive information about people’s identities, locations, habits, and desires. Artificial Intelligence’s capabilities in these areas can increase the risk that personal data could be exploited and exposed. To combat this risk, the Federal Government will ensure that the collection, use, and retention of data is lawful, is secure, and mitigates privacy and confidentiality risks. Agencies shall use available policy and technical tools, including privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) where appropriate, to protect privacy and to combat the broader legal and societal risks—including the chilling of First Amendment rights—that result from the improper collection and use of people’s data.
(g) It is important to manage the risks from the Federal Government’s own use of AI and increase its internal capacity to regulate, govern, and support responsible use of AI to deliver better results for Americans. These efforts start with people, our Nation’s greatest asset. My Administration will take steps to attract, retain, and develop public service-oriented AI professionals, including from underserved communities, across disciplines—including technology, policy, managerial, procurement, regulatory, ethical, governance, and legal fields—and ease AI professionals’ path into the Federal Government to help harness and govern AI. The Federal Government will work to ensure that all members of its workforce receive adequate training to understand the benefits, risks, and limitations of AI for their job functions, and to modernize Federal Government information technology infrastructure, remove bureaucratic obstacles, and ensure that safe and rights-respecting AI is adopted, deployed, and used.
(h) The Federal Government should lead the way to global societal, economic, and technological progress, as the United States has in previous eras of disruptive innovation and change. This leadership is not measured solely by the technological advancements our country makes. Effective leadership also means pioneering those systems and safeguards needed to deploy technology responsibly—and building and promoting those safeguards with the rest of the world. My Administration will engage with international allies and partners in developing a framework to manage AI’s risks, unlock AI’s potential for good, and promote common approaches to shared challenges. The Federal Government will seek to promote responsible AI safety and security principles and actions with other nations, including our competitors, while leading key global conversations and collaborations to ensure that AI benefits the whole world, rather than exacerbating inequities, threatening human rights, and causing other harms.
Sec. 3. Definitions. For purposes of this order:
(a) The term “agency” means each agency described in 44 U.S.C. 3502(1), except for the independent regulatory agencies described in 44 U.S.C. 3502(5).
(b) The term “artificial intelligence” or “AI”’ has the meaning set forth in 15 U.S.C. 9401(3): a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments. Artificial intelligence systems use machine- and human-based inputs to perceive real and virtual environments; abstract such perceptions into models through analysis in an automated manner; and use model inference to formulate options for information or action.
(c) The term “AI model” means a component of an information system that implements AI technology and uses computational, statistical, or machine-learning techniques to produce outputs from a given set of inputs.