The head of OpenAI , the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, addressed Congress on Tuesday, emphasizing the need for government intervention to address the risks associated with increasingly powerful AI systems.
During a Senate hearing, Sam Altman, the CEO, acknowledged that concerns exist regarding how AI advancements may impact our lives, and OpenAI shares those concerns. Altman suggested establishing either a U.S. or global agency. An agency would take on the responsibility of licensing the most potent AI systems and have the authority to revoke licenses if safety standards are not met.
His San Francisco-based startup rocketed to public attention after it released ChatGPT late last year. The free chatbot tool answers questions with convincingly human-like responses.
“Generative AI” Tools
What started out as a panic among educators about ChatGPT’s use to cheat on homework assignments has expanded to broader concerns about the ability of the latest crop of “generative AI” tools to mislead people, spread falsehoods, violate copyright protections and upend some jobs.
And while there’s no immediate sign Congress will craft sweeping new AI rules, as European lawmakers are doing, the societal concerns brought Altman and other tech CEOs to the White House earlier this month and have led U.S. agencies to promise to crack down on harmful AI products that break existing civil rights and consumer protection laws.
Connecticut Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on privacy, technology, and the law, commenced the hearing by playing a recorded speech.
Even though the voice bore a resemblance to that of the senator, it was actually a voice clone.Blumenthal’s floor speeches were used to generate it. It recited opening remarks created by ChatGPT.
The result was impressive, said Blumenthal, but he added, “What if I had asked it, and what if it had provided, an endorsement of Ukraine surrendering or (Russian President) Vladimir Putin’s leadership?”
The overall tone of senators’ questioning was polite Tuesday, a contrast to past congressional hearings in which tech and social media executives faced tough grillings over the industry’s failures to manage data privacy or counter harmful misinformation.