The Justice Department is stepping up its focus on artificial intelligence, with officials warning Thursday that companies and people who deliberately misuse the technology to advance a white-collar crime like price fixing, fraud or market manipulation will be at risk for a harsher sentence, the Associated Press reports.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco discussed the issue one day after the Justice Department announced charges against a former Google software engineer accused of stealing AI trade secrets his company while secretly working with two China-based companies. “All new technologies are a double-edged sword — but AI may be the sharpest blade yet. It holds great promise to improve our lives — but great peril when criminals use it to supercharge their illegal activities, including corporate crime,” Monaco told an American Bar Association conference of white-collar lawyers in San Francisco. Federal prosecutors have long used increased sentences for criminals whose behavior is seen as posing an especially serious risk to victims and the public, and the same principle applies to AI, she said.