Biden’s AI Order Taps Cold War Crisis Powers for Tech Oversight

President Joe Biden’s sweeping executive order establishing the first set of rules governing development and deployment of artificial intelligence applies a 73-year-old national security law to oversee the booming industry.

The order invokes the Defense Production Act to require companies building especially large, widely applicable AI models to disclose details to the government about their training and safety testing process. That means companies like OpenAI Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google will have to disclose activities relating to model training, cybersecurity protections, and the results of safety tests for future large AI models.

Although most of the president’s order ...