Four federal U.S. agencies issued a warning on Tuesday that they already have the authority to tackle harms caused by artificial intelligence bias and they plan to use it.
The warning comes as Congress is grappling with how it should take action to protect Americans from potential risks stemming from AI. The urgency behind that push has increased as the technology has rapidly advanced with tools that are readily accessible to consumers, like OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT. Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced he’s working toward a broad framework for AI legislation, indicating it’s an important priority in Congress.
But even as lawmakers attempt to write targeted rules for the new technology, regulators asserted they already have the tools to pursue companies abusing or misusing AI in a variety of ways.
In a joint announcement from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Justice, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, regulators laid out some of the ways existing laws would allow them to take action against companies for their use of AI.
For example, the CFPB is looking into so-called digital redlining, or housing discrimination that results from bias in lending or home-valuation algorithms, according to Rohit Chopra, the agency’s director. CFPB also plans to propose rules to ensure AI valuation models for residential real estate have safeguards against discrimination.
“There is not an exemption in our nation’s civil rights laws for new technologies and artificial intelligence that engages in unlawful discrimination,” Chopra told reporters during a virtual press conference Tuesday.
“Each agency here today has legal authorities to readily combat AI-driven harm,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said. “Firms should be on notice that systems that bolster fraud or perpetuate unlawful bias can violate the FTC Act. There is no AI exemption to the laws on the books.”
Khan added the FTC stands ready to hold companies accountable for their claims of what their AI technology can do, adding enforcing against deceptive marketing has long been part of the agency’s expertise.
The FTC is also prepared to take action against companies that unlawfully seek to block new entrants to AI markets, Khan said.
“A handful of powerful firms today control the necessary raw materials, not only the vast stores of data but also the cloud services and computing power, that startups and other businesses rely on to develop and deploy AI products,” Khan said. “And this control could create the opportunity for firms to engage in unfair methods of competition.”
Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the DOJ Civil Rights Division, pointed to a prior settlement with Meta over allegations that the company had used algorithms that unlawfully discriminated on the basis of sex and race in displaying housing ads.
“The Civil Rights Division is committed to using federal civil rights laws to hold companies accountable when they use artificial intelligence in ways that prove discriminatory,” Clarke said.
EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows noted the use of AI for hiring and recruitment, saying it can result in biased decisions if trained on biased datasets. That practice may look like screening out all candidates who don’t look like those in the select group the AI was trained to identify.
Still, regulators also acknowledged there’s room for Congress to act.
“I do believe that it’s important for Congress to be looking at this,” Burrows said. “I don’t want in any way the fact that I think we have pretty robust tools for some of the problems that we’re seeing to in any way undermine those important conversations and the thought that we need to do more as well.”
“Artificial intelligence poses some of the greatest modern day threats when it comes to discrimination today and these issues warrant closer study and examination by policymakers and others,” said Clarke, adding that in the meantime agencies have “an arsenal of bedrock civil rights laws” to “hold bad actors accountable.”
“While we continue with enforcement on the agency side, we’ve welcomed work that others might do to figure out how we can ensure that we are keeping up with the escalating threats that we see today,” Clarke said.
Charles Liang, chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer Inc., during the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday, June 5, 2024. The trade show runs through June 7.
Annabelle Chih | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Embattled server maker Super Micro Computer said on Monday that it’s hired BDO as its new auditor and submitted a plan to Nasdaq detailing its efforts to regain compliance with the exchange. The shares jumped 23% in extended trading.
“This is an important next step to bring our financial statements current, an effort we are pursuing with both diligence and urgency,” Super Micro CEO Charles Liang said in a statement.
Super Micro is late in filing its 2024 year-end report with the SEC, and said earlier this month that it was looking for a new accountant after its previous auditor, Ernst & Young, stepped down in October. Ernst & Young was new to the job, having just replaced Deloitte & Touche as Super Micro’s accounting firm in March 2023.
Super Micro said it told Nasdaq that it believes it will be able to file its annual report for the year ended June 30, and quarterly report for the period ended Sept. 30. The company said it will remain listed on the Nasdaq pending the exchange’s “review of the compliance plan.”
Shares of Super Micro soared more than twentyfold over a two year period from early 2022 until their peak in March of this year. But the stock has been hammered on troubling news about its compliance with Nasdaq. Once valued at about $70 billion, the company’s market cap was at $12.6 billion at the close on Monday, following a 16% rally during regular trading.
Super Micro has been one of the primary beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence boom, due to its relationship with Nvidia. Sales last fiscal year more than doubled to $15 billion.
On Monday, Super Micro announced that it was selling products featuring Nvidia’s next-generation AI chip called Blackwell. The company competes with vendors like Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in packaging up Nvidia AI chips for other companies to access.
Super Micro was added to the S&P 500 in March, reflecting its rapidly growing business and then-soaring stock price. Less than two weeks after the index changes were announced, Super Micro reached its closing high of $118.81.
The troubles began within months. In August, Super Micro said it wouldn’t file its annual report with the SEC on time. Noted short seller Hindenburg Research then disclosed a short position in the company, and said in a report that it identified “fresh evidence of accounting manipulation.” The Wall Street Journal later reported that the Department of Justice was at the early stages of a probe into the company.
The month after announcing its report delay, Super Micro said it had received a notification from the Nasdaq, indicating that the delay in the filing of its annual report meant the company wasn’t in compliance with the exchange’s listing rules. Super Micro said the Nasdaq’s rules allowed the company 60 days to file its report or submit a plan to regain compliance. Based on that timeframe, the deadline was Monday.
Kelly Steckelberg attends an Evening from the Heart LA 2022 Gala hosted by the John Ritter Foundation for Aortic Health at Valley Relics Museum in Van Nuys, California, on May 5, 2022.
Araya Doheny | Getty Images
Canva, a high-valued design software startup that competes with Adobe, said Monday that it hired Kelly Steckelberg as its chief financial officer, five years after she helped take Zoom public and then guided the company through its Covid-19 pandemic surge.
Founded in 2013, Canva was valued recently at $32 billion, a drop from its peak of $40 billion in 2021.
“Kelly’s impressive track record as a strong leader and strategic thinker, combined with her proven expertise in scaling enterprise companies, make her the perfect addition to our leadership bench,” Canva said in an emailed statement.
Canva is generating about $2.5 billion in annualized revenue and boasts 220 million monthly users. The company is widely viewed as a top initial public offering candidate for venture-backed tech companies after a historically slow period for new offerings dating back to early 2022.
On Monday, ServiceTitan, which sells software for the trades, filed to list on the Nasdaq. Cerebras, a maker of artificial intelligence chips, has been on file since late September, and online lender Klarna said last week that it has confidentially filed its IPO paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
A Canva spokesperson declined to comment on the startup’s timeline for an IPO.
Steckelberg held financial positions at Cisco and was CEO of online dating company Zoosk before joining Zoom in 2017. Steckelberg is based in Austin, Texas, while Canva has its headquarters in Sydney, Australia.
Zoom went public with Steckelberg’s help in 2019. The video-chat company saw its market cap soar to upward of $160 billion in October 2020, early in the Covid-19 pandemic, as users working from home swarmed to the app. Zoom has since lost more than 85% of its value.
Steckelberg announced her departure from Zoom in August after seven years at the company. Last month, former Microsoft executive Michelle Chang replaced Steckelberg as Zoom’s CFO.
Canva’s previous finance chief Damien Singh resigned in February after the company said it was conducting an internal investigation surrounding inappropriate behavior.
ServiceTitan, a company that sells software to contractors such as plumbers and roofers, on Monday filed to go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “TTAN.”
The filing suggests that investors could be getting more interested in next-generation software companies. Just a few, including Reddit and Rubrik, debuted on public markets in the U.S. this year, and chipmaker Cerebras filed for an initial public offering. There were basically no tech initial public offerings in 2021 or 2022 as central bankers pushed up interest rates to flight inflation, making investors less willing to bet on money-losing challengers.
Based in Glendale, California, ServiceTitan offers cloud software for advertising, scheduling jobs, dispatching, producing invoices and taking payments. It had a $35.7 million net loss on $193 million in revenue in the quarter that ended on July 31, according to the filing. Revenue was up about 24% year over year, and the quarterly loss had narrowed from almost $52 million.
ServiceTitan’s revenue growth rate will stand out for people investing in cloud stocks, who have seen rates sag with few new public companies in the sector. The average growth rate for Bessemer’s Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index, the basis for the WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund, is 16.6%.
The company was originally founded in 2007 by Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan, whose fathers were both residential contractors. While most ServiceTitan customers are small and medium-sized businesses, it has started focusing more on selling products to big companies and construction customers, according to the filing.
ServiceTitan plans to keep up to 5% of shares in the IPO for eligible clients, the founders’ friends and family members and others through a directed share program.
Investors include Battery Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Iconiq and TPG. Iconiq on its own controlled 24% of the compan’s Class A shares.
Competitors include Salesforce and SAP, along with specialty companies such as HouseCall Pro, Jobber and Workwave.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Citigroup are among the company’s IPO underwriters.