2023-05-17 09:27:17 ET
%OpenAI Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sam Altman has called on lawmakers in Washington, D.C. to %RegulateArtificialIntelligence (A.I.) and technologies such as %ChatGPT .
Speaking before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, Altman warned that A.I. is powerful enough to change society in unpredictable ways and said that “regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks.”
Altman, who helped create the ChatGPT generative A.I. platform, called on U.S. senators to heavily regulate A.I. technologies that are raising ethical, legal and national security concerns at an alarming rate.
“My worst fear is that we, the technology industry, cause significant harm to the world,” Altman said. “If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong.”
Altman was joined at the Senate hearing by IBM () Chief Privacy and Trust Officer Christina Montgomery, who called for “precision regulation” on how A.I. tools are used rather than how they’re developed.
Senators at the hearing questioned whether Congress can effectively regulate A.I.
Political gridlock and heavy lobbying on the part of technology companies have complicated efforts in Washington, D.C. to pass even basic legislation.
Several Senators noted that Congress and the legislative process often lag far behind the pace of technology advancements.
Some lawmakers in the U.S. capital have been calling for a new regulatory agency with jurisdiction over A.I. and other emerging technologies.
Altman said during his appearance that he would welcome oversight from a new regulatory agency as a way to continue leading on the technology that springs from American innovation.
The most immediate concern related to A.I. is its potential to spread disinformation and manipulated content, which could undermine democracies around the world.
Much of the discussion at the Senate hearing focused on generative A.I., which can produce images, audio and text that seem human but are not.
Privately held OpenAI has driven many of these developments by introducing products such as ChatGPT, which can produce human-like blocks of text and create realistic images from simple voice commands.
The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has proposed several non-binding guidelines for A.I. and earlier this year published an “A.I. Bill of Rights” to help consumers navigate the new technology.
Altman said that companies should be required to get a license to operate and conduct a series of tests before releasing any new A.I. models.