Amid low trust in artificial intelligence, government officials must adapt their policies and laws to better equip the country, the former acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy said during an LBJ School of Public Affairs AI symposium on Tuesday.

Policy Leadership in the Age of AI panels discussed artificial intelligence and the law in various contexts and concluded with a keynote address from Princeton University social science professor and former deputy assistant to President Joe Biden, Alondra Nelson. 

Nelson spoke first about concerns AI raises, like its potential involvement in bioweapons and potential harm to children. She said that trust in AI is lowest in Western democracies, including the United States.

“How we try to get from that place to a better place — to the AI for good — is typically through using policy,” Nelson said.

The Biden administration’s 2023 executive order about artificial intelligence covers “everything from labor to healthcare to national security,” Nelson said. The order is part of an “explosion” of AI policies within the last year, she said. More recently, the United Nations created the Governing AI for Humanity report on Sept. 19, which Nelson contributed to as part of the UN’s AI advisory body. 

Nelson said AI is the first transformative technology produced in the private sector and spoke about adaptation as an approach to AI policy. She said people should recognize existing laws that affect AI, but new laws and standards may also need to be created to govern AI. 

“Governing AI requires both, that we return to first principles … (and) we need to recognize that new laws, rules, norms, etc. may be needed to craft this kind of new governance structure,” Nelson said.

Nelson posed the White House’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, which includes safe and effective AI models, protection from discrimination, data privacy, communication of the use of AI and human alternatives as an example of AI governance. The proposal, which Nelson oversaw as acting director of the Office of Science and Technology, also supplied best practices on adhering to its principles.

“We don’t have to create a whole new suite of laws,” Nelson said. “If we are anchoring in those first principles — that people should not be discriminated against in a healthcare setting, for example … (then) those things are true.”