1984: Thread

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Tue May 16 14:01:44 PDT 2023


Watch Live: ChatGPT's Sam Altman Testifies Before Senate Judiciary
Committee As Calls For AI Regulation Build

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, will
testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday morning as
lawmakers prepare regulations for new artificial intelligence tools
released for consumers.

"Artificial intelligence urgently needs rules and safeguards to
address its immense promise and pitfalls," Connecticut Democratic Sen.
Richard Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on
Privacy, Technology, and the Law, wrote in a statement.

    "This hearing begins our Subcommittee's work in overseeing and
illuminating AI's advanced algorithms and powerful technology. I look
forward to working with my colleagues as we explore sensible standards
and principles to help us navigate this uncharted territory,"
Blumenthal said.

"Artificial intelligence will be transformative in ways we can't even
imagine, with implications for Americans' elections, jobs, and
security," Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who also chairs the
Senate panel on privacy and technology, said. He added:

    "This hearing marks a critical first step towards understanding
what Congress should do."

Besides Altman, the hearing will include testimony from:

    Gary Marcus, Professor Emeritus at New York University; and
    Christina Montgomery, Vice President and Chief Privacy and Trust
Officer at IBM.

The surging popularity of AI tools like ChatGPT, which allow users to
generate responses via text or images, has received calls from the
"Godfather of AI," Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio
and others about the existential risk AI systems pose to the economy
and humans.

In recent weeks, the Biden administration unveiled a series of
measures to tackle the increased use of AI technology. The Department
of Commerce has initiated a process to gather feedback on potential
regulations.

There is no question that AI will be transformative in many ways for
companies that integrate this technology into their systems. One
long-term effect it might cause is a massive layoff wave this decade.
Goldman's latest report (available to pro subscribers in the usual
place) indicates up to 300 million jobs are at risk across the Western
world.

And BCA Research's latest report on AI has an ominous outlook about
the technology:

    "The safety risks around AI are huge, and we think there is a more
than 50/50 chance AI will wipe out all of humanity by the middle of
the century."

The next step for lawmakers on Capitol Hill is some form of regulation
of AI. However, those next steps need to be clarified.


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