Eeshna Dashottar, Pune
CEOs of major tech giants and US lawmakers met in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Insight Forum held on Wednesday, 13th August 2023, in Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. The forum was focused on discussing the need and ways for regulating the risks posed by AI advancements, a sphere gaining attention and investments since the coming of Open AI’s ChatGPT.
AI tools have been on the rise, bringing along with them potential dangers such as misinformation, deep fakes, privacy threats and more. These demerits urged Elon Musk and a group of AI experts to propose for a 6-month halt in the making of technology more advanced than Open AI’s GPT-4 early this year. This forum, spearheaded by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, aimed at bringing attention to these threats and calling for suggestions that could further govern potential rulemaking in this regard. With the emerging 2024 US general elections, regulating AI becomes essential to counter its interference in the elections. The forum was not open to the public. Amongst the invited were X chair Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Open AI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadela, and more. More than 60 senators too became a part of this gathering.
Schumer emphasized on the issue under discussion as being of great importance for the next generation, stating the vitality to understand more of the technology so as to not rush rulemaking about AI. Zuckerberg highlighted both the risky and beneficial part of AI, calling for the Congress to work on AI to support innovation and safeguards. He spoke about the need for an all round engagement of various actors including industries, civil society, scholars and policymakers in curbing the risks of AI, while also making the most of all that the technology has to offer. Musk, referring to AI as ‘a double-edged sword’, called for a federal AI oversight agency to keep a check on the technology.
As much as this forum can be called a big step towards the emerging technology, the meeting also brought several doubts and criticism among the public. With the lack of access to the public, the event also raised questions about the non-inclusion of representations from various industries like banking, pharma, engineers, and people from academia like the researchers and experts in the field. Sen. Elizabeth Warren furthermore claimed that this forum became another way for the leaders from the tech community to influence policies, leaving doubts over potential regulatory capture in this arena. Warren, along with Sen. Edward Markey even sent a letter to big AI companies asking about their take on the working conditions of the people working behind the scene in training-moderating the AI models. With the entire world trying to fight the battle with the emerging risks of AI, it is much awaited to see what the results of this forum would bring forth in terms of regulations and safeguards in this sphere.