Bill Gates has spoken out against an open letter calling for a pause on the development of artificial intelligence, even as U.S. President Joe Biden meets with advisors to discuss the technology, and more European nations weigh some kind of ban.
The technologist-turned-philanthropist, in his first public comments since last week’s open letter sparked a debate about the future of AI, said it would be better to focus on how best to use the developments in AI, as it was hard to understand how a pause could work globally.
The letter, issued by the non-profit Future of Life Institute and co-signed by Elon Musk and more than 1,000 AI experts, demanded an urgent pause in the development of systems “more powerful” than Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s new GPT-4, which can hold human-like conversations, compose songs and summarize lengthy documents.
“I don’t think asking one particular group to pause solves the challenges,” Gates said on Monday. “Clearly there’s huge benefits to these things … what we need to do is identify the tricky areas.”
Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden is meeting Tuesday with his council of advisers on science and technology about the “ risks and opportunities” that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence pose for individual users and national security.
The White House said Biden would use the meeting to “discuss the importance of protecting rights and safety to ensure responsible innovation and appropriate safeguards,” and to reiterate his call for Congress to pass legislation to protect children and curtail data collection by technology companies.
In Europe, Italy’s move to temporarily ban ChatGPT has inspired other European countries to study if harsher measures are needed to rein in the wildly popular chatbots, and whether to co-ordinate such actions.
While European parliamentarians disagree over the content and reach of the EU AI Act, some regulators are finding that existing tools, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that gives users control over their personal information, can apply to the rapidly emerging category of generative AI companies.
Generative AI, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, relies on algorithms to generate remarkably human responses to text queries based on analyzing large volumes of data, some of which may be owned by internet users.
The Italian agency, also known as Garante, accused OpenAI of failing to check the age of users and the “absence of any legal basis that justifies the massive collection and storage of personal data” to train the chatbot.
“The points they raise are fundamental and show that GDPR does offer tools for the regulators to be involved and engaged into shaping the future of AI,” said Dessislava Savova, partner at U.K.-based law firm Clifford Chance.
Privacy regulators in France and Ireland have reached out to counterparts in Italy to find out more about the basis of the ban. Germany could follow in Italy’s footsteps by blocking ChatGPT over data security concerns, the German commissioner for data protection told the Handelsblatt newspaper.
“We are following up with the Italian regulator,” said a spokesperson for Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner. “We will co-ordinate with all EU data protection authorities in relation to this matter.”
The privacy regulator in Sweden, however, said it had no plan to ban ChatGPT, nor was it in contact with the Italian watchdog. Spain’s regulator said it had not received any complaint about ChatGPT but did not rule out a future investigation.
Italy’s Garante, like other privacy regulators, is independent of the government and was also among the first to formally warn Chinese-owned TikTok about breaching of existing European Union privacy rules.
But while the privacy commissioners favour more regulation, the government has been more lenient. Italy’s deputy prime minister has criticized its own regulator’s decision, calling it “excessive,” and a German government spokesman said a ban of ChatGPT would not be necessary.
OpenAI has taken ChatGPT offline in Italy on Friday. It did not respond to questions about other European regulators looking into potential violation in their countries. It has no offices in the European Union. It also said on Friday that it actively works to reduce personal data in training its AI systems.
The Italian investigation into OpenAI was launched after a nine-hour cyber security breach last month led to people being shown excerpts of other users’ ChatGPT conversations, and their financial information.
While currently focused on the philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates has been a bullish supporter of AI and described it as revolutionary as the Internet or mobile phones. In a blog post titled “The Age of AI has begun,” which was published shortly before the open letter, he said he believes AI should be used to help reduce some of the world’s worst inequities.
He also said the details of any pause would be complicated to enforce. “I don’t really understand who they’re saying could stop, and would every country in the world agree to stop, and why to stop,” he said. “But there are a lot of different opinions in this area.”
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