Yesterday, Sam Altman, the Chief Executive Officer of OpenAI (ChatGPT),was convened as an official witness at the United States Senate Judiciary Committee to testimony on Artificial Intelligence and its potential dangers. As an advocate for safety, Altman proposed that the US government should set out a regulatory framework and form an agency in charge of deciding which AIs can be allowed to operate in the Capitol.
Altman was not alone in his opinion, his views were joined by Christina Montgomery, the Director of Trust and Privacy at IBM, and Gary Marcus, a leading professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University and the founder of Artificial Intelligence companies. Each of these experts share different worries when it comes to the deployment of AI and gave their evidence at the hearing.
Altman primarily dreads that the Technology industry will cause severe damage to the world with the AI technology if left unchecked, and expressed his anxiety about the manipulation of images and voice. He suggested that a mixed combination of companies conducting the right thing, strict regulations and public education are all necessary to ensure the implementation is done safely.
Meanwhile, Gary Marcus predicts that “these new systems will cause destabilization” in the world, capable of producing deceptive lies on a tremendously large scale. He further alerted the senators of how these AI machines can possibly change public sentiment and warned that this power can influence the ruling of our society.
OpenAI (ChatGPT) is a research laboratory co-founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk and Y Combinator president Sam Altman to develop advanced Artificial-Intelligence technologies and to make sure AI is accessible to everyone. They recently released the GPT-4 language model as a part of their research with plans to release GPT-5 in the next half year.
As for Sam Altman, his career started off in the Silicon Valley as a technology investor and advisor to startups. After heading Y Combinator, one of the most important investment organizations in the Valley, Altman co-founded OpenAI, a laboratory funded by renowned capitalists such as Microsoft, PayPal, Samsung and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Reid Hoffman. His main objective is to focus on creating technology tools that will have a positive effect in society and protect people from harmful AI’s.
