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May 17, 2023

OpenAI’s Sam Altman To Congress: Regulate Us, Please!

Posted by in categories: governance, government, robotics/AI

In a wide-ranging and historic congressional hearing Tuesday, the creator of the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence called on the government to regulate his industry.

“There should be limits on what a deployed model is capable of and then what it actually does,” declared Sam Altman, CEO and cofounder of OpenAI, referring to the underlying AI which powers such products as ChatGPT.

He called on Congress to establish a new agency to license large-scale AI efforts, create safety standards, and carry out independent audits to ensure compliance with safety thresholds.

The hearing, run by Sen.


The hearings marked a significant step towards comprehensive understanding and governance of the AI landscape as AI continues to evolve and become an increasingly integral part of our lives. But they also highlighted the lack of understanding, even by AI researchers themselves, about how the most powerful generative systems do what they do.

“We need to know more about how the models work,” said Marcus.

Generative AI in the form of large language models such as GPT-4, the model behind the latest iteration of ChatGPT, have read more text than any single person possibly could and can sound human in their response. But even their creators know little about how the AI actually reasons — any more than a lion tamer truly understands what a lion thinks.

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