ChatGPT’s chief testifies before Congress as concerns grow about artificial intelligence risks
Published:Tuesday | May 16, 2023 | 12:56 PM
The head of the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT told Congress on Tuesday that government intervention “will be critical to mitigating the risks of increasingly powerful” AI systems.
“As this technology advances, we understand that people are anxious about how it could change the way we live. We are too,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified at a Senate hearing Tuesday.
His San Francisco-based startup rocketed to public attention after it released ChatGPT late last year.
ChatGPT is a free chatbot tool that answers questions with convincingly human-like responses.
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 that 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 US agencies to promise to crack down on harmful AI products that break existing civil rights and consumer protection laws.
Founded in 2015, OpenAI is also known for other AI products including the image-maker DALL-E. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into the startup and has integrated its technology into its own products, including its search engine Bing.
Altman is also planning to embark on a worldwide tour this month to national capitals and major cities across six continents to talk about the technology with policymakers and the public. On the eve of his Senate testimony, he dined with dozens of U.S. lawmakers, several of whom told CNBC they were impressed by his comments.
Follow The Gleaner on Twitter and Instagram @JamaicaGleaner and on Facebook @GleanerJamaica. Send us a message on WhatsApp at 1-876-499-0169 or email us at onlinefeedback@gleanerjm.com or editors@gleanerjm.com.