SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco had an eventful week as the city hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. At his final speaking appearance on Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden joked about extending APEC events out for another five days.
Biden began his speech inside the Moscone Center joking, “Well, hello, everyone. We’re going to extend this conference another five days. If that’s okay.”
The APEC Leaders Retreat Meeting marked the final day of the week-long summit. Biden spoke at length about artificial intelligence, interconnected economic growth, and technology.
“Over the last few days, we’ve worked together — to find ways to build an inclusive, resilient, and sustainable economies for the Asia-Pacific,” Biden said.
The President said, “We’re going to see more technological change in the next 10 years than we’ve seen in the last 50 years. We’re going to see that changing so rapidly.”
Biden continued, “Xi Jinping of China and I had a brief discussion about the impact of artificial intelligence and how we have to work on it. Together, we must ensure the change is for the better. And we must ensure that the digital technologies, like artificial intelligence, are used to uplift — not limit — the potential of our people.”
President Biden said tech companies developing AI should:
- Independently test the security of their AI systems before these systems are released to the public.
- Watermark content that is AI-generated so people know it has been generated by artificial intelligence.
- Minimize the risks that AI systems can pose to society, such as promoting bias or discrimination.
Biden said, “This is a shared challenge and requires shared solutions. And I would respectfully suggest all of us around this table have a responsibility to work together to seize the opportunities and manage the risks of this technology, which are so critical to our collective economic futures.”
Aboard Air Force One, President Biden departed from the San Francisco Bay Area around 2 p.m. Friday.
Just one day after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spoke at an APEC forum on artificial intelligence, he was ousted from the company. The company’s board members concluded that Altman was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.
“I loved my time at OpenAI,” Altman wrote in a post on X Friday. “It was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all I loved working with such talented people.”
San Francisco-based OpenAI is the parent company behind ChatGPT.
