Sam Altman , chief executive officer of Open AI ChatGPT openly said in the hearing of Capitol hill that there is a need of regulation of artificial intelligence when his poem writing chatbot stunned the entire world. The issue rises when the lawmakers seemed deeply troubled about the advancements of AI after the session in the Capitol Hill started off with a leading senator opening up a hearing with a computer generated voice which also sounded remarkably similar to his own voice.
“If you were listening from home, you might have thought that voice was mine and the words from me, but in fact, that voice was not mine,”
said Senator Richard Blumenthal (after the voice had spoken the speech generated by chatbot). Artificial intelligence technologies “are more than just research experiments. They are no longer fantasies of science fiction, they are real and present,” said Blumenthal, a Democrat.
Tipped as an opportunity to educate lawmakers, Altman used the session to urge Congress to impose new rules on big tech, despite deep political divisions that for years have blocked legislation aimed at regulating the internet. In a matter of months, several AI models have entered the market. Mr. Altman said a new agency should be formed to license AI companies. Mr. Altman, 38, has become a spokesman of sorts for the burgeoning industry. He has not shied away from addressing the ethical questions that AI raises, and has pushed for more regulation. He said that AI could be as big as “the printing press” but acknowledged its potential dangers.
“I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong…we want to be vocal about that,” Mr. Altman said. “We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening.”
He also admitted the impact that AI could have on the economy, including the likelihood that AI technology could replace some jobs, leading to layoffs in certain fields. “There will be an impact on jobs. We try to be very clear about that,” he said, adding that the government will “need to figure out how we want to mitigate that”. Mr. Altman added, however, that he is “very optimistic about how great the jobs of the future will be”. Mr. Altman told legislators he was worried about the potential impact on democracy, and how AI could be used to send targeted misinformation during elections – a prospect he said is among his “areas of greatest concerns“.
Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal observed that an AI-dominated future “is not necessarily the future that we want”. “We need to maximize the good over the bad. Congress has a choice now. We had the same choice when we faced social media. We failed to seize that moment,” he warned.
