ChatGPT's Sam Altman urges US lawmakers to regulate artificial intelligence
Story highlights
Sam Altman tried to encourage Congress to impose new ruleson big companies
Sam Altman, who is the chief executive officer (CEO) of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, urged lawmakers in the United States on Tuesday to regulate artificial intelligence (AI). Politicians chimed in after experts expressed concerns about the advancements of AI.
Altman weighed in on AI's ability to interfere with election integrity, which will be a "significant area of concern" and added that it needs regulation. He said, "If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong."
A leading senator opened the session on Capitol Hill with a computer-generated voice that sounded eerily similar to his own. Senator Richard Blumenthal said, "If you were listening from home, you might have thought that voice was mine and the words from me, but in fact, that voice was not mine."
Blumenthal, who is a Democrat, said that AI technologies "are more than just research experiments. They are no longer fantasies of science fiction, they are real and present".
Some experts and critics of AI believe that the technology would increase societal problems such as bias and misinformation, and some even think that AI could end humanity itself.
In recent months, several companies have rushed to bring increasingly versatile AI to market. They have poured unending data and billions of dollars into the effort.
Senator Cory Booker said, "There's no way to put this genie in the bottle. Globally, this is exploding."
Meanwhile, Senator Mazie Hirono pointed out the problems related to the spread of misinformation as the 2024 election nears.
"In the election context, for example, I saw a picture of former President Trump being arrested by NYPD and that went viral," she said.
During the session, Altman tried to encourage Congress to impose new ruleson big companies.
"OpenAI was founded on the belief that artificial intelligence has the potential to improve nearly every aspect of our lives, but also that it creates serious risks," Altman said.
He further noted that generative AI developed by OpenAI will "address some of humanity's biggest challenges, like climate change and curing cancer."
And while speaking on the concerns about disinformation, job security and other hazards, he said that "we think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models".
(With inputs from agencies)
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Wednesday, May 17, 2023 at 12:27 am