The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, has added his voice to the voices of concern around AI after calling for the United States to regulate artificial intelligence.
Altman was testifying in front of a US senate committee on May 16, 2023 about the possibilities and potential pitfalls of the new technology. Mr. Altman said that he supported regulatory laws which would ensure that AI would benefit humanity while minimizing the potential use of it to harm.
“We think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models,” Altman said in his remarks, suggesting that the US government needed to consider licensing and testing requirements for development and release of these AI models.
OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT, the AI chatbot which captured the minds of the world due to its much more advanced interactive skills. Since its inception in November 30, 2022, ChatGPT has been getting better and better with each update, with the GPT-4 currently being the most advanced generative AI in the market. Other tech companies have also created or been improving their generative AI at alarming rate. The most recent to be publicly announced was Google’s PaLM 2, an update on the previous PaLM model. This accelerated AI advancement has led to concerns in some quarters
Electoral concerns
Among the dangers of AI use according to Altman was that they machine learning would be used to interfere with elections. Altman said he was nervous about AI and elections and thus, guidelines and regulations were needed. He expressed concern that AI could potentially be used to spread targeted misinformation during elections.
Altman also admitted that the age of generative AI could have an impact on jobs that that OpenAI was trying to be very clear on that.
The advancement of generative AI has been happening so fast in just a few months in ways nobody could have predicted and as such, calls are rising for regulations to be put in place before it’s too late.
