The Biden administration has begun looking into the need to examine artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT amid growing concerns that they could be used to discriminate or spread harmful information.
As a first step toward potential regulation, the U.S. Department of Commerce on Tuesday formally opened a request for comments on what it calls accountability measures, including whether new artificial intelligence models with potential risks should go through a certification process before being released. Those comments will be accepted for the next 60 days.
The U.S. government is taking this action at a time when the use of artificial intelligence tools is booming. These tools can quickly generate human-like text, images, videos and more. Some analysts estimate that ChatGPT, developed by AI lab OpenAI, has reached 100 million users, faster than any consumer application in history.
Alan Davidson, director of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which issued the request for comment, said, “It’s amazing to see these tools do this at a relatively early stage. We know that we need to put some guardrails in place to make sure they are used responsibly.”
Davidson said the comments will be used to help advise U.S. policymakers on how to approach artificial intelligence. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s legal role is to advise the president on technology policy, not to write or enforce regulations, he added.
Already, the technology industry and government officials have expressed concern about a range of potential hazards of AI, including the use of the technology to commit crimes or spread false information. Last month, Sen. Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, wrote to several artificial intelligence companies asking about public experiments, with the safety of children at the top of his list of concerns. In those experiments, chatbots offered disturbing advice to users posing as young people.
“There’s a very lively discussion going on about the potentially explosive benefits and downsides of artificial intelligence,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said in an interview, “and for Congress, it’s the ultimate challenge, a highly complex and technical challenge, with great stakes and great urgency.”
President Biden discussed the topic with an advisory board of scientists at the White House last week. When asked by a reporter if the technology was dangerous, Biden said, “It remains to be seen. There could be dangers.” Members of this committee include representatives from Microsoft and Google. They and other companies releasing artificial intelligence systems say they are constantly updating safety guardrails, such as by programming chatbots not to answer certain questions.
Meanwhile, tech leaders including Elon Musk recently called for a six-month moratorium on developing systems more powerful than GPT-4, a new version of OpenAI’s chatbot released about a month ago. They warned that the ongoing race between OpenAI and competitors such as Google has not been adequately managed and planned for potential risks.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust division says it is monitoring competition in the AI space. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, for its part, warned companies that they could face legal consequences for making false or unsubstantiated claims about AI products.
