WASHINGTON, May 9 (Reuters) - The Biden administration

is poised to open up a new front in its effort to safeguard U.S.

AI from China and Russia with preliminary plans to place

guardrails around the most advanced AI models, Reuters reported

on Wednesday.

Government and private sector researchers worry U.S.

adversaries could use the models, which mine vast amounts of

text and images to summarize information and generate content,

to wage aggressive cyber attacks or even create potent

biological weapons.

Here are some threats posed by AI:

DEEPFAKES AND MISINFORMATION

Deepfakes - realistic yet fabricated videos created by AI

algorithms trained on copious online footage - are surfacing on

social media, blurring fact and fiction in the polarized world

of U.S. politics.

While such synthetic media has been around for several

years, it's been turbocharged over the past year by a slew of

new "generative AI" tools such as Midjourney that make it cheap

and easy to create convincing deepfakes.

Image creation tools powered by artificial intelligence from

companies including OpenAI and Microsoft ( MSFT ), can be used

to produce photos that could promote election or voting-related

disinformation, despite each having policies against creating

misleading content, researchers said in a report in March.

Some disinformation campaigns simply harness the ability of

AI to mimic real news articles as a means of disseminating false

information.

While major social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter,

and YouTube have made efforts to prohibit and remove deepfakes,

their effectiveness at policing such content varies.

For example, last year, a Chinese government-controlled news

site using a generative AI platform pushed a previously

circulated false claim that the United States was running a lab

in Kazakhstan to create biological weapons for use against

China, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in its

2024 homeland threat assessment.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking at an

AI event in Washington on Wednesday, said the problem has no

easy solutions because it combines the capacity of AI with "the

intent of state, non-state actors, to use disinformation at

scale, to disrupt democracies, to advance propaganda, to shape

perception in the world."

"Right now the offense is beating the defense big time," he

said.

BIOWEAPONS

The American intelligence community, think tanks and

academics are increasingly concerned about risks posed by

foreign bad actors gaining access to advanced AI capabilities.

Researchers at Gryphon Scientific and Rand Corporation noted

that advanced AI models can provide information that could help

create biological weapons.

Gryphon studied how large language models (LLM) - computer

programs that draw from massive amounts of text to generate

responses to queries - could be used by hostile actors to cause

harm in the domain of life sciences and found they "can provide

information that could aid a malicious actor in creating a

biological weapon by providing useful, accurate and detailed

information across every step in this pathway."

They found, for example, that an LLM could provide

post-doctoral level knowledge to trouble-shoot problems when

working with a pandemic-capable virus.

Rand research showed that LLMs could help in the planning

and execution of a biological attack. They found an LLM could

for example suggest aerosol delivery methods for botulinum

toxin.

CYBERWEAPONS

DHS said cyber actors would likely use AI to "develop new

tools" to "enable larger-scale, faster, efficient, and more

evasive cyber attacks" against critical infrastructure including

pipelines and railways, in its 2024 homeland threat assessment.

China and other adversaries are developing AI

technologies that could undermine U.S. cyber defenses, DHS said,

including generative AI programs that support malware attacks.

Microsoft ( MSFT ) said in a February report that it had tracked

hacking groups affiliated with the Chinese and North Korean

governments as well as Russian military intelligence, and Iran's

Revolutionary Guard, as they tried to perfect their hacking

campaigns using large language models.

NEW EFFORTS TO ADDRESS THREATS

A bipartisan group of lawmakers unveiled a bill late

Wednesday that would make it easier for the Biden administration

to impose export controls on AI models, in a bid to safeguard

the prized U.S. technology against foreign bad actors.

The bill, sponsored by House Republicans Michael McCaul and

John Molenaar and Democrats Raja Krishnamoorthi and Susan Wild,

would also give the Commerce Department express authority to bar

Americans from working with foreigners to develop AI systems

that pose risks to U.S. national security.

Tony Samp, an AI policy advisor in Washington, said

policymakers in Washington are trying to "foster innovation and

avoid heavy-handed regulation that stifles innovation" as they

seek to address the many risks posed by the technology.

But he warned that "cracking down on AI development through

regulation could inhibit potential breakthroughs in areas like

drug discovery, infrastructure, national security, and others,

and cede ground to competitors overseas."