The executive director of OpenAI, which created the ChatGPT program, said in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday that regulating artificial intelligence (AI) is “critical” to mitigating the risks associated with using this technology.
Sam Altman, an emerging Silicon Valley figure, has called on Congress to impose new regulations on big tech companies, despite deep political divisions that have blocked legislation to regulate the internet for years.
“We believe that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models”the 38-year-old businessman judged.
“It is critical that the most powerful artificial intelligence develops with democratic values, which means that the leadership of the United States is decisive”he said, testifying about the impact of AI before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee.
The launch of ChatGPT, in November, has increased the interest of the public, but also of companies, in the so-called generative AI, that is, capable of creating content, texts, images, sounds and videos.
Generative AI sparks passions and many people are concerned about its potential impact on many professions, with potential massive job losses, and fundamentally on society as a whole.
“OpenAI was founded on the belief that artificial intelligence has the potential to improve almost every aspect of our lives, but it also carries serious risks”admitted Altman.
“One of my biggest fears is that we, this industry, this technology, will do significant harm to society”, he said. “If this technology goes in the wrong direction, it could go very far (…) And we want to work with the government to prevent this from happening,” he added.
The entrepreneur recalled that while OpenAI is a private institution, it is overseen by a non-profit organization, which commits it “to work to widely disseminate the benefits of AI and maximize the security of AI-based systems.”
Altman has regularly expressed support for the establishment of a regulatory framework for AI, preferably at an international level. “I know it seems naive to propose such a thing, it seems very difficult” to achieve, but “there are precedents,” he assured, citing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as an example.
Source: DN
