CEO Sam Altman of OpenAI stated on Friday that the company has no intentions to leave Europe, reversing a warning he made earlier this week to do so if it became too difficult to comply with future legislation on artificial intelligence.
Sam Altman stated on Wednesday that the present draught of the EU AI Act is “over-regulating” and that the EU is working on what may be the first set of rules to control AI globally. Altman wrote in a tweet on Friday, “We are pleased to continue operating here and of course have no plans to leave.
His threat of quitting Europe had drawn criticism from EU industry chief Thierry Breton and a host of other lawmakers. Altman has spent the past week crisscrossing Europe, meeting top politicians in France, Spain, Poland, Germany and the Britain to discuss the future of AI, and progress of ChatGPT.
He called his tour a “very productive week of conversations in Europe about how to best regulate AI!” . OpenAI had faced criticism for not disclosing training data for its latest AI model GPT-4. The company had cited a “competitive landscape and safety implications” for not disclosing the details.
While debating the AI Act draft, EU lawmakers added new proposals that would force any company using generative tools, like ChatGPT, to disclose copyrighted material used to train its systems.
“These provisions relate mainly to transparency, which ensures the AI and the company building it are trustworthy,” Dragos Tudorache, a Romanian member of the European Parliament who is leading the drafting of EU proposals, told Reuters on Thursday. “I don’t see a reason why any company would shy away from transparency.”
Clash with Regulators
EU parliamentarians agreed on the draft of the act earlier this month. Member states, the European Commission and Parliament will thrash out the final details of the bill later this year.
AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT, backed by Microsoft (MSFT.O), has created new possibilities around AI and fears around its potential have provoked excitement and alarm – and brought it into conflict with regulators.
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OpenAI first clashed with regulators in March, when Italian data regulator Garante shut the app down domestically, accusing OpenAI of flouting European privacy rules. ChatGPT came back online after the company instituted new privacy measures for users.
On Thursday, OpenAI announced that it will distribute 10 equal grants from a $1 million fund for experiments aimed at determining the governance of AI software. Altman referred to these grants as “how to democratically decide on the behavior of AI systems.”
