ChatGpt’s Sam Altman Gets Smart With Biden?
Sam Altman's tour of US institutions continues. The goal of the software house sponsored by Microsoft seems to be to participate in the legislative process that will regulate artificial intelligence. Facts, comments and analysis
The hearing in the Senate of Sam Altman, number 1 of OpenAI as well as father of ChatGpt, the much talked about AI that will steal jobs and so on, had considerable prominence in Italian newspapers and media. But for the wrong reasons. Titola Repubblica : The CEO of OpenAi takes a step backwards: " Artificial Intelligence must be put under control like nuclear weapons " . TgLa7 follows closely: USA, CEO Openai: “Artificial intelligence like nuclear weapons” . And, again, the Reformist : Technology, alarm from the CEO of OpenAi: "Artificial intelligence must be put under control". Potentially as dangerous as nuclear weapons i. The list would be long, useless to continue because the tenor is mimeographed.
Everyone focused on a passage, actually crucial, that Sam Altman has followed a lot: "Artificial intelligence must be kept at bay because it could change everyone's life and turn it upside down". But, as noted by Stefano Feltri, former editor of Domani , in his newsletter, for the wrong reason. In fact, the head of Open AI is not the classic "comic-book repentant mad scientist" who is asking for help from the institutions to stop the creature he created and which threw him off his horse, far from it.
THE LICENSE SAM ALTMAN WANTS
“Sam Altman – wrote Feltri, author of the Appunti blog – is asking politics to regulate the sector in order to sanction the dominant position of OpenAi and to protect it from interference in the birth and affirmation of its business model.” Altman – underlines the former director of Domani – is asking for a licensing system and security requirements, i.e. a restriction on entry into the sector: only those who respect certain standards can be authorized to develop artificial intelligence technologies above a certain threshold of complexity” .
The intention is clear to act as a cuckoo and push out those who try to enter its nest. With the subtle difference that while those who want to join the club of companies that develop AI after the regulation will have to demonstrate that they have the requisites with a sort of license, those who are already in it – and this is the case of OpenAi by Sam Altman himself – have not had to pass any selection.
A VERY LITTLE SUPER PARTES TECHNICIAN
There is no victimhood in the words of the man who leads the software house of the moment, it is much less repentance than strong alarmism to turn the situation to his own advantage: he entered the Senate to be heard by the caryatids present on what he combines with his algorithms of which everyone talks and no one has understood anything yet, he tries to stay in the control room beyond what is necessary by pretending to be a technician useful to the legislator who must, according to him, intervene as soon as possible to regulate the matter. A technician who, however, is at the same time the main party involved, with the consequence that he would end up dictating rules regarding his own economic activity to politics. At the light of the Sun.
It doesn't take ChatGpt to understand Sam Altman's game. "Since many other countries are also entering the sector (read: China) – Feltri writes again – the United States should impose this system of licenses and rules "on a global scale in order to ensure international cooperation on the security of artificial intelligence, including considering intergovernmental oversight and standard-setting mechanisms”. Translated for ordinary people, continues the former editor of the newspaper Domani – Altman would like the United States to globally ban other companies or countries from entering the sector controlled by OpenAi and its large investor Microsoft. If the standards are defined by the United States, always interested in protecting its own companies and keeping those of unreliable countries at a distance – the journalist comments -, it is clear that a Chinese artificial intelligence, for example, would never be authorized to operate in the market American or in any case in the one subjected to this hypothetical global coordination for security.”
THE SAM ALTMAN TOUR
Altman – recalls Massimo Gaggi in Corsera – has been engaged for a month on a "tour of goodwill" made up of political confrontations, which culminated in the summit two weeks ago at the White House, in which the head of OpenAI was a great protagonist. There are those who notice, they underline from via Solferino, that they have avoided making commitments on two points considered essential by many experts: the transparency of the training method of these models (that of ChatGPT is based on everything circulating on the net, including personal data) and the commitment not to use professional content, works of art or intellectual property covered by copyright for training. During the discussion, Sam Altman acknowledged that the owners of intellectual works have the right to have the economic value of their contribution recognised, but he did not indicate concrete solutions, beyond reassuring tones.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/sam-altman-di-chatgpt-fa-il-furbetto-con-biden/ on Thu, 18 May 2023 11:31:05 +0000.