The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday published a new set of actionable recommendations to help promote safe and secure development and deployment of artificial intelligence across all U.S. critical infrastructure, including healthcare and public health.
WHY IT MATTERS
The document was developed in consultation with numerous stakeholders across the public and private sectors, said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas during a conference call. It is meant to align with the White House executive order on AI put forth by President Biden a year ago, as it also serves as a “living document” to help guide AI use into the next administration.
DHS is charged with protecting the “methods by which Americans power their homes and businesses, make financial transactions, share information, access and deliver healthcare and put food on the table,” according to the new framework, Roles and Responsibilities Framework for Artificial Intelligence in Critical Infrastructure.
“As the entities that own and operate these critical infrastructure systems increasingly adopt AI, it is the Department’s duty to understand, anticipate, and address risks that could negatively affect these systems and the consumers they serve.”
The Department of Homeland Security identifies 16 critical infrastructure sectors it considers vital to domestic and global safety and stability, national economic security, national public health or safety – “or any combination thereof.”
Healthcare and Public Health are among those key areas.
“These sectors are increasingly deploying AI to improve the services they provide, build resilience, and counter threats,” according to the new framework. But “these uses do not come without risk, and vulnerabilities introduced by the implementation of this technology may expose critical systems to failures or manipulation by nefarious actors. Given the increasingly interconnected nature of these systems, their disruption can have devastating consequences for homeland security.”
The White House EO of October 23 directed the DHS secretary to convene a board to advise him and other public- and private-sector stakeholders about the safe and secure development and use of the nation’s critical infrastructure.
Sec. Mayorkas first gathered that board – which includes leaders from OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, IBM, Microsoft, Alphabet, Northrop Grumman and others – this past May.
Other members of the board include the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the Stanford Human-centered Artificial Intelligence Institute, the Brookings Institution and other leaders at the local and state level.
Members identified several areas that were their focus of concern, such as the lack of common approaches for the deployment of AI, physical security flaws, and a reluctance to share information within industries.
The framework, developed to complement and advance existing guidance from the White House, the AI Safety Institute, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and others, was developed with the layers of the AI supply chain in mind, from cloud and compute providers to developers, along with critical infrastructure owners and operators.