Engineering U.S. Responsible AI Policy, A Survey, 2020-2025

The increase in public access to large-scale AI and the enormous variety of current and potential applications has created widespread excitement and sparked concern over unknown and unintended consequences. While AIs rapidly advance into useful tools across broad applications, we do not yet understand AIs’ potential harms, social impacts, and outcomes. The public is increasingly using free AI platforms that produce text, images, and media based on prompts, known as Generative AI (GenAI). At the same time, researchers in industry, government, and academia recognize a need for responsible governance of AIs. They question how to regulate powerful AIs being developed at the frontier of computing. Engineers play an important, informative role in this process, offering valuable technical and design knowledge to policymakers, including concerns about risks and ethical applications. This summary identified research papers, governance documents, and industry approaches to responsible AI policy design within the U.S. It provides an overview of the voices at the heart of designing AI policy and demonstrates the challenge of responsibly regulating emergent AI technology. Findings support coursework related to engineering ethics and societal impacts, engineering policy communication, and design projects focused on GenAI. Documents are presented chronologically and interwoven with government initiatives to demonstrate the impact of Executive Orders on shaping AIs’ outcomes. Findings will enhance future engineers’ expertise in the realities, challenges, and impacts of developing and responsibly governing AIs.