Source: ReclaimTheNet.org
The internet and social media were transformative technologies that enabled the distribution of speech at a speed and scale that the world had never seen before.
Generative AI, a technology that can quickly construct various types of media with a few prompts, has a similar transformative potential because it allows people to create text, images, art, music, videos, and more at a speed and scale that was never possible before.
As the internet and social media became more ubiquitous, some lawmakers attempted to put the genie back in the bottle by ignoring First Amendment concerns and demanding that online platforms censor content that lawmakers deem to be “misinformation.” And on Tuesday, during the first Senate hearing on generative AI, some lawmakers made similar demands of this new technology.
The hearing was titled “Oversight of A.I.: Rules for Artificial Intelligence” and several senators quizzed the witnesses, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, IBM Chief Privacy & Trust Officer Christina Montgomery, and NYU Professor Emeritus Gary Marcus, on how generative AI could be censored or restricted so that it couldn’t create content that they deem to be misinformation.
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said: “We just can’t let people make stuff up and then not have any consequence.”
She also complained that the OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, had produced false information after her team asked it to create a tweet about a polling location in Bloomington, Minnesota, and used this example to suggest that “all kinds of misinformation” could be generated during elections.
Altman told Klobuchar that OpenAI is concerned about the impact on elections and said: “Hopefully the entire industry and government can work together quickly.”
While he noted that ChatGPT is different to social media because it’s used to generate content, not distribute it, Altman still assured Klobuchar that OpenAI is censoring ChatGPT outputs by refusing to generate certain things and monitoring activity so that it can detect when users generate lots of content….