ChatGPT boss says AI should be regulated by a US or global agency

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The head of the AI ​​company that makes ChatGPT told Congress on Tuesday that government intervention will be critical to mitigating the risks of increasingly powerful AI systems.

As this technology advances, we understand that people are anxious about how it could change the way we live. So are we,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a Senate hearing.

Altman proposed the formation of a US or global agency that would license the most powerful AI systems and have the authority to revoke that license and ensure safety standards were met.

His San Francisco-based startup leapt to public attention after releasing ChatGPT late last year. The free chatbot tool answers questions with convincing human-like responses.

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Senator Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, opened the hearing with a recorded speech that sounded like the Senator, but was actually a trained vocal clone on Blumenthal speeches and reciting ChatGPT – written opening remarks.

The result was impressive, Blumenthal said, but added, “What if I asked for, what if he provided, an endorsement of Ukraine’s surrender or of Vladimir Putin’s (the Russian president) leadership?”

The general tone of the senators’ questioning was polite on Tuesday, in contrast to past congressional hearings in which tech and social media executives faced harsh grilling about the industry’s failures to manage data privacy or counter misinformation harmful. In part, that’s because both Democrats and Republicans have said they’re interested in seeking Altman’s expertise to avoid problems that haven’t yet occurred.

Blumenthal said AI companies should be required to test their systems and disclose known risks before releasing them, and expressed particular concern about how future AI systems could destabilize the job market. Altman broadly agreed, although he had a more optimistic view of the future of work.

Driven by his worst fear of AI, Altman has mostly avoided the details, except to say that the industry could cause significant harm to the world, and that if this technology goes bad, it can go very bad.

But he later proposed that a new regulatory agency should impose safeguards that would block AI models that could self-replicate and self-exfiltrate in the wild, hinting at futuristic concerns about advanced AI systems that could manipulate humans to give up control.

Focus on a distant sci-fi trope of super-powerful AI could make it more difficult to act on already existing harms that require regulators to dig deep into data transparency, discriminatory behavior, and the potential for deception and misinformation said a former Biden administration official who co-authored his plan for an AI bill of rights.

It’s the fear of these (superpowered) systems and our lack of understanding of them that is driving everyone crazy, said Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a Brown University computer scientist who was deputy director for science and justice in the White House. Office for science and technology policy. This fear, which is very unfounded, is a distraction from all the worries we are facing right now.

OpenAI has expressed these existential concerns since its inception. Co-founded by Altman in 2015 with backing from tech billionaire Elon Musk, the startup has evolved from a non-profit research lab with a security-focused mission into a company. Its other popular AI products include the DALL-E image maker. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in the startup and has integrated its technology into its own products, including its Bing search engine.

Altman also plans to embark on a world tour this month in national capitals and major cities on six continents to speak about the technology with policy makers and the public. On the eve of his Senate testimony, he dined with dozens of US lawmakers, many of whom told CNBC they were impressed by his comments.

The panel’s ranking Republican, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, said the technology has big implications for elections, jobs and national security. He said Tuesday’s hearing marked “a critical first step toward understanding what Congress should do.

A number of tech industry leaders said they welcome some form of AI oversight, but warned against what they see as overly heavy-handed rules. Altman and Marcus have both called for an AI-focused regulator, preferably an international one, with Altman citing the precedent of the United Nations nuclear agency and Marcus comparing it to the US Food and Drug Administration. But IBM’s Montgomery has instead called on Congress to take a precision regulatory approach.

We believe AI should be regulated to the point of risk—essentially, Montgomery said, by establishing rules that govern the implementation of specific uses of AI rather than the technology itself.

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