Justice Department beefs up focus on artificial intelligence enforcement, warns of harsher sentences
WASHINGTON — The Ministry of Justice is sharpening its focus on artificial intelligence. Officials are set to warn on Thursday that companies and people who deliberately misuse the technology to further white-collar crimes such as price fixing and market manipulation risk a harsher penalty.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco will also say the Justice Department will take into account how well a company manages the risks of AI technology whenever it assesses a corporate compliance program. Such a program consists of a set of policies and procedures designed to detect misconduct and ensure that executives and employees comply with the law.
The comments from the Justice Department’s No. 2 leader underscore the extent to which law enforcement officials are concerned about how the rapidly developing technology could be exploited, either by foreign adversaries or by domestic entities, to harm the US. Monaco announced the policy steps a day later. The Justice Department has announced charges against a former Google software engineer accused of stealing AI trade secrets from the Mountain View, California-based 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 danger if criminals use it to boost their illegal activities, including corporate crime,” Monaco will tell a conference of white-collar lawyers at the American Bar Association in San Francisco, according to a copy of her remarks prepared.
The Ministry of Justice, Monaco says, has long used higher sentences for criminals whose behavior is seen as posing a particularly serious risk to victims and the public. The same principle applies to AI, she says.
“Where AI is deliberately misused to make white-collar crime significantly more serious,” she says, “our prosecutors will seek harsher penalties – for both individuals and corporate defendants.”
“And,” she adds, “compliance officers need to take this into account. When our prosecutors review a company’s compliance program – as they do with all corporate resolutions – they consider how well the program mitigates the company’s key risks. And for a growing number of companies, this now poses the risk of AI misuse.”
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