Washington. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, creator of the ChatGPT interface, told a US Senate panel on Tuesday that regulating artificial intelligence (AI) is “crucial” to limit the risks of using this technology.
Altman, the latest figure to emerge from Silicon Valley, has urged Congress to impose new rules on big technology companies, despite deep political divisions that for years have blocked legislation to regulate the Internet.
“We believe that regulatory intervention by governments will be crucial to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models,” estimated the 38-year-old businessman.
“It is critical that the most powerful AI is developed with democratic values, which means that the leadership of the United States is determinative,” he said when testifying on the impact of AI before a Senate judiciary subcommittee.
The launch of ChatGPT, in November, increased the interest of the public, but also of companies, for the so-called generative AI, that is, that capable of creating content, text, images, sounds or videos.
Generative AI is stirring up passion and many are concerned about its potential impact on many professions, with possible massive job cuts, and ultimately on society as a whole.
“OpenAI was founded on the belief that artificial intelligence has the potential to improve nearly every aspect of our lives, but it also creates serious risks,” Altman acknowledged.
“One of my biggest fears is that we, this industry, this technology, will cause significant harm to society,” he said. “If this technology goes down the wrong path, it can go quite far. (…) And we want to work with the government to prevent that from happening.”
The businessman recalled that although OpenAI, the entity that developed ChatGPT, is a private company, it is controlled by a non-profit organization, which obliges it to “work for a wide distribution of the benefits of AI and to maximize security of AI-based systems.
Altman has regularly expressed his support for establishing a regulatory framework for AI, preferably at the international level.
“I know it seems naive to propose something like this, it seems very difficult” to achieve, but “there are precedents,” he said, citing the example of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
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