The White House convened tech executives and ordered them to safeguard the public from the perils of artificial intelligence
The White House summoned the CEOs of leading tech enterprises and told them that they must protect the public from the dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The CEO of Microsoft – Satya Nadella, CEO of Google – Sundar Pichai and the CEO of OpenAI – Sam Altmann were also present in the White House. They were told they had a moral duty to safeguard society.
The tech executives were told it was upto firms to ensure the safety and security of their products and were warned that the administration was open to new regulations and legislation to cover AI.
The recently launched AI products like ChatGPT and Bard have captured the public’s imagination. They offer ordinary users the chance to interact with “Generative AI”, which can summarise information from multiple sources within seconds, debug computer code, write presentations, and even poetry that sounds plausibly as if they might have been human-generated.
The Vice President of the United States (U.S.) – Kamala Harris said in a statement following the meeting that the new technology could pose a risk to safety, privacy and civil rights, although it also had the potential to improve lives. Sam Altman also said that in terms of regulation, executives were surprisingly on the same page on what needs to happen.
Besides, the White House announced a U.S. $ 140 million (£ 111 million) investment from the National Science Foundation to launch 7 new AI research institutes.
Prior to this, the godfather of AI – Geoffrey Hinton quit his high-profile job at Google so he could speak freely about the serious risks that he now believes may accompany the AI technology he helped ushered in, including user-friendly applications like ChatGPT.
The head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) – Lina Khan outlined her views on how and why AI needed to be regulated. In March 2023, the CEO of Tesla and Twitter and Elon Musk and Co-Founder of Apple – Steve Wozniak, called for a pause on the rollout of the technology.
There are concerns that AI could rapidly replace peoples’ jobs, as well as worries that chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard can be inaccurate and lead to the dissemination of misinformation. There are also concerns that Generative AI could flout copyright law. Voice Cloning AI could exacerbate fraud. AI-generated videos can spread fake news.
However, the Co-Founder of Microsoft – Bill Gates has hit back against calls for an AI pause saying such a move would not solve the challenges ahead. He said it would be better to focus on how best to use the developments in AI.
