Technology executives, including Sundar Pichai of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, and OpenAI's Sam Altman, were summoned to the White House on Thursday to discuss their responsibility to protect society from the risks of artificial intelligence (AI).
They were told they had a "moral" duty to safeguard the public, and were warned that the administration may introduce further regulations for the sector.
New AI products like ChatGPT and Bard, which have captured the public's imagination, offer users the chance to interact with "generative AI", which can summarize information, write presentations and even poetry, and offer tangible illustrations of the potential risks and rewards of the new technology.
US Vice President Kamala Harris said AI could pose a risk to safety, privacy, and civil rights, but also had the potential to improve lives. The private sector had "an ethical, moral, and legal responsibility to ensure the safety and security of their products".
AI Fears Spark Calls for Regulation
Calls for greater regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) are mounting amid fears the technology could displace jobs, create inaccuracies, flout copyright laws, exacerbate fraud, and spread fake news.
There are concerns that emerging AI, including ChatGPT and Bard, could spawn inaccuracies and lead to the dissemination of misinformation. However, supporters such as Bill Gates believe focusing on how best to use the technology is more important than a regulatory "pause".
Critics have also warned that over-regulating could give China's tech industry a strategic advantage. The Federal Trade Commission's Lina Khan has also outlined the reasons why AI needs to be regulated.
Steady or Laggy?
A senior software engineer at Google named Luke Sernau recently published a critique claiming that Google is losing its edge in artificial intelligence (AI) to the open-source community. Sernau argues that Google's focus on its rivalry with OpenAI has distracted it from rapid developments in open-source technology.
According to him, the real threat to Google's AI efforts comes from open-source communities, where engineers are advancing models that rival those at big tech companies, which can be made more cheaply, and can be faster and more customizable.
Sernau suggests that Google should shift its focus to smaller, nimbler models that can be iterated upon quickly. His document was published on an internal Google system in April and has since been shared widely among Google employees. However, the company declined to comment on the content of Sernau's post.