Flexible AI regulation is essential, says ‘father’ of ChatGPT – 05/16/2023 – Tech

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tells US lawmakers Tuesday that AI regulation needs to allow companies to be flexible and adapt to new technology developments as the industry faces increasing scrutiny. regulatory authorities around the world.

Altman, whose company created the ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot, will say “artificial intelligence regulation is essential” as he testifies for the first time before Congress.

His comments come as regulators and governments around the world step up their scrutiny of the rapidly developing technology, amid growing concerns about potential abuse.

According to notes prepared and released prior to the hearing, Altman will tell the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and Law that he is “eager to help lawmakers determine how to facilitate regulation that balances encouraging security while time, ensure that people can access the benefits of technology”.

Last week, European Union lawmakers agreed on a strict set of rules on the use of artificial intelligence, which includes restrictions on chatbots like ChatGPT, as Brussels moves towards enacting the world’s most restrictive regime for the technology development.

Earlier this month, both the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the UK competition watchdog fired warning shots at the industry.

The FTC said it was “focusing intensely on how companies will choose to use artificial intelligence technology”, while the UK competition and markets authority plans to release an analysis of the artificial intelligence market.

Altman’s testimony will recommend that artificial intelligence companies comply with an “appropriate set of security requirements, including internal and external pre-launch testing”, and licensing or registration conditions for AI models.

However, he will make a caveat by emphasizing that the security requirements that “artificial intelligence companies need to meet [devem] have a governance regime flexible enough to adapt to new technological developments”.

The rapid development of generative artificial intelligence, which can produce convincing, human-like writing, over the past six months has raised alarm among some artificial intelligence ethicists.

In March, Elon Musk and more than 1,000 researchers and technology executives signed a letter calling for a six-month break from training artificial intelligence language models more powerful than GPT-4, the technology behind the company’s “chatbot”. OpenAI.

Earlier this month, Geoffrey Hinton, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, resigned from Google after a decade at the tech giant to speak freely about the risks of the technology, which he warned would widen social divisions and could be used by agents. malicious.

“Artificial intelligence will be transformative in ways we can’t yet imagine, with implications for Americans’ elections, jobs and security,” Republican Senator Josh Hawley said in a statement ahead of the hearing.

Christina Montgomery, vice president and chief privacy and trust officer at IBM, and Gary Marcus, professor emeritus at New York University, will also testify on Tuesday.

“Artificial intelligence urgently needs rules and safeguards to deal with its immense promises and pitfalls,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, chairman of the committee, said in a statement.

“This hearing begins our subcommittee’s work to oversee and clarify the use of advanced algorithms and powerful artificial intelligence technology… as we explore sound standards and principles to help us navigate this uncharted territory,” he added.

Translated by Paulo Migliacci