Google's Alice Friend opens on responsible AI approach in NYC
Alice Friend introduces herself as Google's Director for AI and Emerging Tech Policy, noting nearly 16,000 employees across Chelsea, Hudson Square, and Pier 57. She says Google's goal is improving lives through technology while taking a bold but responsible AI approach.
Speaker Menon, Chair De La Rosa, and members of the Council, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.
My name is Alice Friend, and I serve as Director for AI and Emerging Tech Policy at Google.
While my appearance at this hearing may be virtual, please know that New York City is a vital home for Google.
With nearly 16,000 employees working across our Chelsea, Hudson Square, and Pier 57 campuses, we care deeply about the safety, economic dynamism, and digital resilience of this city.
Our goal at Google has always been to improve the lives of as many people as possible through technology.
Every time people use technology to solve a real problem, from finding an answer to a question to screening for disease, we take another step towards what we set out to achieve.
AI is making it possible to solve economic, scientific, and social problems faster than ever.
But we know that it poses challenges as well.
To unlock the benefits and address the challenges of AI, we take a bold but responsible approach, emphasizing cutting-edge research to guide our decision-making and inform the development of our AI safety and
security approaches.
We are also committed to publishing this research and to being transparent about our practices.
Our internal governance focuses on responsibility throughout the AI development lifecycle, covering model development, application deployment, and post-launch monitoring.
We identify and assess AI risks through a broad range of approaches, which include research, input from internal and external experts, and adversarial testing.
We evaluate our models and systems against benchmarks for safety, privacy, and security.
And we build mitigations using techniques like safety fine-tuning, out-of-model filters, and robust provenance solutions.
Since 2019, we have published annual AI progress reports to share how we apply these responsible practices to our AI technology development and deployment.