The tone of congressional hearings involving high-tech executives in recent years is best described as adversarial. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and other tech luminaries were decked out on the Capitol by lawmakers angry at their companies.
But on Tuesday, Sam Altman, chief executive of San Francisco startup OpenAI, testified before members of a Senate subcommittee hearing that more and more powerful AI technologies are being developed within his own and other companies. Members largely agreed on the need to regulate google and microsoft.
The boyish-looking Altman provides a loose framework for managing what happens next in a rapidly evolving system that some believe could fundamentally change the economy. So I swapped out my usual pullover sweater and jeans for a blue suit and tie.
In his first testimony before Congress, Mr. Altman urged lawmakers to have committee members regulate artificial intelligence. This highlights the deep anxiety technologists and governments feel about AI’s potential harm.
“If this technology doesn’t work, I think it could go very wrong, and we want to be very vocal about it,” he said. “We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening.”
Altman made his public debut at the Capitol as interest in AI exploded. Tech giants are pouring billions of dollars and effort into what they call transformative technologies amid growing concerns about the spread of disinformation, job destruction, and the role of AI that will one day rival human intelligence. did it.
This brought the technology to the attention of Washington. “There is great potential and great danger in what you are doing,” President Biden said at a meeting with AI company chief executives earlier this month. Top leaders in Congress have also pledged to regulate AI.
A Stanford dropout and tech entrepreneur, 38-year-old Altman’s arrival was what christened him as an AI guru. The hearing was attended by IBM executives and the eminent professor and frequent critic. AI technology.
Altman said the company’s technology could destroy some jobs, but it could also create new ones, making it important to “think about how the government wants to mitigate that.” said it would. He proposed the creation of an agency that would issue licenses for the creation of large-scale AI models, safety regulations, and the tests that AI models must pass before being released to the public.
“While we believe the benefits of the tools we have deployed so far far outweigh the risks, ensuring their safety is critical to our work,” Altman said.
But after nearly three hours of questioning at Tuesday’s hearing, it was unclear how lawmakers would respond to calls to regulate AI. Congress has a bleak track record on technology regulation. Dozens of privacy, speech and security bills have been defeated due to partisan strife and fierce opposition from tech giants.
Lawmakers have pushed for ideas for an independent body to oversee AI, rules to force companies to disclose how their models work and the datasets they use, and antitrust laws to prevent companies like Microsoft and Google from monopolizing emerging industries. raised.
Lawmakers were generally friendly to Mr. Altman and thanked him for agreeing to meet him personally and attend the hearings. They approached him as an educator.
Democratic Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, chairman of the Senate Committee, said the hearings were part of a series of hearings to learn more about the potential benefits and harms of AI in order to finally “write the rules.” Said to be the first of the meeting. He also acknowledged that Congress has failed to keep up with new technology adoption in the past.
“Our goal is to demystify and hold accountable these new technologies to avoid some of the mistakes of the past,” Blumenthal said. I couldn’t catch it,” he said.
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