Reading 4 min Views 6 Published Updated
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will appear before Congress for the first time on May 16 to discuss the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the United States during an oversight hearing. Also testifying are IBM Vice President of Trust and Privacy Christina Montgomery and NYU Professor Emeritus Gary Markus.
US Senate hearing on #AI Oversight, with @OpenAI CEO @samaIBM’s @_ChristinaMont and NYU Emeritus Prof. @garymarcus, Tuesday am 10 ET. https://t.co/VwiR77F52f
— Gary Marcus (@GaryMarcus) May 10, 2023
Details regarding the hearing agenda remain sparse. Its title “AI Watch: Rules for Artificial Intelligence” implies that the discussion will focus on security and privacy, as will the list of scheduled attendees.
The hearing will mark the first official testimony of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman before Congress, although he recently attended a roundtable with Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House along with the CEOs of Alphabet, Microsoft and Anthropic.
Altman will be joined by IBM VP of Trust and Privacy Christina Montgomery, a member of the U.S. National Advisory Committee on Artificial Intelligence, and New York University Professor Emeritus Gary Markus, a New York Times best-selling author.
Marcus recently made a splash in the AI community with his full support for a community initiative to “pause” AI development for six months.
Related: Elon Musk and tech executives call for pause in AI development
The idea of suspending AI was identified in an open letter posted on the Future of Life Institute website on March 22. At the time of publication of the article, more than 27,500 people subscribed to it.
The stated purpose of the letter is “to urge all AI labs to immediately suspend training on AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least 6 months.”
Sam Altman and Christina Montgomery are among the opponents of the pause.
On Montgomery’s side, her feelings were explained in a detailed IBM blog post she wrote titled “Don’t Pause AI Development, Prioritize Ethics Instead”, in which she argued for a more precise approach to regulating AI:
“A complete pause in AI education, together with current trends that seem to be de-prioritizing investment in AI ethics industry efforts, will only lead to more harm and setbacks.”
According to another IBM blog post, written in part by Montgomery, the company believes AI should be regulated based on risk – it’s worth noting that, to the best of our knowledge, IBM doesn’t currently have generative AI models in the public domain.
OpenAI, on the other hand, is responsible for ChatGPT, perhaps the most popular AI technology in existence.
According to an interview with Lex Friedman at an event at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Altman, the company’s CEO, supports the safe and ethical development of AI systems, but believes in the need to “engage everyone in the conversation” and “release these systems to the world.”
Thus, Marcus remains the only exception, one who has been a staunch supporter of the pause since its inception. Although Markus admittedly “did not participate in the drafting” of the pause letter, he did write a blog post titled “Is It Time to Hit the AI Pause Button?” almost a month before the open letter was published.
While the upcoming Senate hearings will likely function as nothing more than a forum for members of Congress to ask questions, the discussion can be devastating, depending on which experts you trust.
If Congress decides AI regulation deserves a tough hand, experts like Montgomery fear that such efforts could have a dampening effect on innovation without necessarily addressing security concerns.
This harm can seep into operational sectors, where GPT technology underpins many bots and services. For example, in the world of financial technology, cryptocurrency exchanges are adapting chatbot technology to serve their customers, conduct transactions, and analyze the market.
However, experts such as Marcus and Elon Musk fear that a failure to enact what they see as sound policies regarding AI oversight could lead to an existential crisis for humanity.
