OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testifies before the US Senate, suggests AI regulation

The CEO and co-founder of OpenAI urged US politicians to regulate artificial intelligence. During this session, Altman, who was testifying before the Senate panel for the first time, explained to US lawmakers how AI might go wrong and why rules are urgently needed in order to keep a check on any bad actors. He added that if a business breaks the guidelines, the government must not have the authority to revoke an AI licence.

Altman says AI can “create serious risks”

Since ChatGPT became well known, discussions regarding its misuse have also made the news. The world today is far more conscious of the potential risks posed by AI, and some industry professionals, including former co-founder of OpenAI Elon Musk, have called for a six-month moratorium on its advancement.

Despite the fact that OpenAI was founded to enhance human lives, there are risks associated with it, he remarked during the hearing.

"OpenAI was founded on the belief that AI has the potential to improve nearly every aspect of our lives but that it also creates serious risks," he stated. Altman said that it is a significant area of concern and that regulation of AI is necessary when discussing how AI can even be used improperly during elections.

"This technology, in my opinion, has the potential to be quite problematic. We want to cooperate with the government to stop that from happening, he continued, and we want to be public about that.

In reference to the requirement to regulate new technologies, he stated that "government regulatory intervention will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models".

Politicians also voiced alarm throughout the session about the expanding capabilities of AI. At the start of the session, Senator Richard Blumenthal displayed a computer-generated voice that eerily resembled his own.

Further, he stated, "If you were listening from home, you might have assumed that voice and those words came from me, but in reality, that voice was not mine.

Sam Altman acknowledges that he was afraid of his creation

The CEO of OpenAI has previously spoken out about the risks posed by his own invention. Altman had said that he was "a little scared" of his innovation in an interview with ABC News a few days after the advanced ChatGPT, the GPT-4, was unveiled.

Altman warned, "We have got to be careful here. I think people should be happy that we are a little bit terrified of this. If I said otherwise, I believe you should either not believe me or be very sad that I had this position.

He also expressed concern in the same interview about the potential for AI to be exploited to distribute incorrect information.

Further, he added, I am particularly concerned that widespread deception could be spread using these methods. They might be utilised for offensive cyberattacks now that they are getting better at writing computer code.