OpenAI’s Altman Travels the World to Meet with AI Regulators

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is on a mission to convince regulators to regulate artificial intelligence and prevent it from causing catastrophic consequences. Altman has been travelling the world meeting with regulators and policymakers to pitch his idea for a global oversight body that would inspect AI systems, require audits, and restrict deployment. Altman claims the body’s focus should be on reducing existential risk and not left to individual countries since the technology is moving quickly and creating issues. His proposal has attracted the attention of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who seeks to place the UK in the middle between the US wait and see approach and the EU’s strict steps to impose regulation. Critics argue that Altman’s global goodwill tour is a smokescreen, and tech giants will support regulation but not whatever policy or piece of legislation is being proposed and debated. There are also concerns about a lack of common scientific standards and evaluation tools among regulators and tech companies. Japan has already issued administrative guidance against OpenAI to limit the machine learning of sensitive personal information, highlighting that regulators are catching up to AI technology, and enforcement may soon follow.