The U.S. Department of Justice is focusing on artificial intelligence enforcement.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is strengthening its focus on March 5 by issuing a high-level official warning to companies and individuals who misuse artificial intelligence (AI) technology for white-collar crimes such as price fixing and fraud. Or market manipulation increases the risk of receiving a harsher sentence.

“Artificial intelligence (AI), the ultimate disruptive technology, will be bigger than ever before,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.

“All new technologies are double-edged swords, but AI is perhaps the sharpest. “It has great potential to improve our lives, but it also carries great risks if criminals use it to enhance their illicit activities, including corporate crime.”

The comments came as Monaco delivered a keynote address at the American Bar Association’s 39th National White Collar Crime Institute.

She also said the Justice Department would strengthen policies related to monitoring the area.

“We will work to responsibly leverage the benefits of AI, while remaining alert to the risks and using our tools in new ways to address them,” Monaco said. “To be clear, AI-assisted fraud is still fraud. Price fixing using AI is still price fixing. Using AI to manipulate markets is still market manipulation. You get the picture.”

Stiffer sentences for those who abuse technology for financial gain and crime was another key takeaway from the Deputy Attorney General’s speech.

“We have long used sentencing enhancements to increase punishment for offenders whose conduct poses a particularly serious risk to victims and the public, such as increased punishment for offenders who use firearms or other dangerous weapons,” Monaco said. .

“The same principle applies to AI. “If AI is intentionally misused to make white-collar crime much more serious, prosecutors will demand harsher sentences for both individual and corporate defendants.”

Comparing the use of dangerous weapons in violent crimes to the use of AI in white-collar crimes shows that the Department of Justice is taking rapidly advancing technology seriously.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the comments came one day after the Justice Department’s announcement.
Indictments have been announced against former Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) software engineer Linwei Ding (aka Leon Ding). He was accused of stealing trade secrets about AI while secretly working for two Chinese companies.

Speaking in San Francisco last Tuesday, Monaco also took the opportunity to warn compliance officers to be careful of:

“I have directed the Criminal Division to include an assessment of the risks of disruptive technologies, including those associated with AI, in its corporate compliance program evaluation guidelines,” Monaco said.

“When prosecutors evaluate a company’s compliance program, as with all corporate resolutions, they consider how well that program mitigates the company’s most important risks. And more and more companies are running the risk of misusing AI.”

She added that going forward, prosecutors will assess companies’ ability to manage AI-related risks as part of their overall compliance efforts.

AI has long been on the Justice Department’s agenda. Monaco recently announced a new initiative called ‘Justice AI’ during a speech at the University of Oxford in February. This includes a series of meetings with stakeholders across industry, academia, law enforcement and civil society “to address the impact of AI”.

The first discussion session of the ‘Justice AI’ initiative took place in the Bay Area on the same day Monaco gave the keynote address at the American Bar Association.

“We will use these conversations to inform the department’s AI policy on a variety of fronts, including corporate compliance issues that I have asked the Criminal Division to consider,” Monaco said.

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