ChatGpt, because OpenAi makes a mistake against the Italian Guarantor
OpenAI has decided to suspend the service in Italy: it was not a decision by the Guarantor but by the company. But the constraints evoked by the authority are not abstruse impositions devised by the Guarantor, all companies operating in Europe must satisfy them. The post taken from the Twitter profile of Valerio De Stefano, Canada Research Chair in Innovation, Law and Society, professor of Artificial Intelligence & Labor Regulation at the Osgoode Hall Law School of York University and author of the book "Your Boss is an Algorithm"
When you have time, we can also discuss the fact that the Guarantor has NOT blocked ChatGPT at all, nor has he ever decided that artificial intelligence or LLM systems such as ChatGPT should be blocked in Italy. We have been discussing a collective hallucination for three days.
WHAT HAS THE GUARANTEE DECIDED ABOUT CHATGPT
The Guarantor has notified ChatGPT that:
1) has not prepared a privacy policy;
2) has not clarified in what capacity it processes the personal data of the users it processes;
3) does not provide mechanisms to prevent children under 13 from accessing the service (OpenAI itself has set itself these age limits).
THE GUARANTOR'S REQUESTS TO OPENAI
All these points are not a goliardic gimmick of the Guarantor but are clearly required by the GDPR of the EU. The Guarantor has NOT blocked ChatGPT.
THE TIMES OF THE PROCEDURE
OpenAI, the company that manages ChatGPT, has weeks to explain how it intends to respect those European constraints.
THE OPENAI DECISION
Instead, OpenAI has DECIDED to suspend the service in Italy. It was not a decision of the Guarantor but of the company.
THE NON-ABSTRUCTED CONSTRAINTS
Those constraints are not abstruse impositions devised by the Guarantor; all companies operating in Europe must satisfy them…
OPENAI'S REACTION
OpenAI's reaction is the typical move that tech companies undertake when they think they can escape constraints that apply to everyone: selectively withdraw from a market, blame the Authority in charge and mobilize users (and others who fall for it) in defense of a service that should only continue to operate if left free by rules that apply to everyone. Food-delivery platforms and other fake self-employment platforms did it in the past, in various countries, including ours, OpenAI is doing it now to overturn the table.
THE ISSUES UNDERLYING CHATGPT
ChatGPT, and similar systems, pose huge technological, ethical, social, environmental (it consumes a huge amount of energy), political questions. The Guarantor has not decided on these nor would he be entitled to do so. But the regulation of artificial intelligence can no longer be postponed. Other countries are doing it, the tech managers themselves are requesting it (not always disinterestedly), the European Union is doing it.
DISPROPORTIONATIONAL MOVE OF OPENAI
This move by OpenAI to suspend the service in Italy, completely disproportionate to the requests of the Guarantor, is just the way to put pressure on the regulators in advance: once again, the decision of the Guarantor has nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence by itself.
EXAMPLE AND METAPHOR
It's as if an electric car company forgot about mandatory belts in cars, a national transportation authority pointed this out to them, and instead of installing belts on their own models, the company decided not to market those cars in the country. In such a situation, it would be foolish to say that the transport authority is against electric cars, just as it is foolish to say now that the Guarantor is against Artificial Intelligence.
We are not talking about that. First of all, we are deciding whether to admit that non-European tech companies must submit to the same constraints in Europe as European companies.
CONCLUSION
More generally, we are deciding whether it should be the tech companies that decide which rules to submit to or whether, instead, once those rules are democratically adopted, such as the GDPR and the others that will follow, they must be respected or not. The rest is noise.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/chatgpt-perche-openai-sbaglia-a-sbroccare-contro-il-garante-italiano/ on Wed, 05 Apr 2023 05:55:35 +0000.