Consensus from Altman and senators may not catalyze AI regulation

Altman’s first testimony before Congress was a master class in wooing policy makers. The 38-year-old was outspoken. He did not use any technical jargon and agreed with all the pressing concerns of the MPs. At one point, he declined an offer to become America’s top AI regulator. “I love my current job,” he said. MPs asked Altman for advice. He said the US should set up an agency, perhaps a global one, that would provide licenses for powerful AI systems. Gary Marcus, a computer scientist who also testified with Altman, said the agency may have been like the agency. Food and Drug Administration. “I thought they were incredibly open to the idea,” he told me hours after the hearing.

I am skeptical about quick action. First, as Altman and Marcus suggest, the US has a dismal record in passing legislation to create new technology regulators. Despite all the bipartisan agreement on social media and several bills proposing new regulators to protect citizens’ data, there is still no federal privacy law doing so. Second, Altman’s actions speak louder than his words. He founded OpenAI in 2015 as an NGO with a mission statement to advance AI for the benefit of humanity unrestricted by financial obligations. Six years later, it had grown into a profitable company with a close partnership with Microsoft. This pivot shows that Altman may be willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his endgame: super-intelligent computers that can exceed human capabilities, which may also mean that Withdraw support for regulations that compromise the goal.

For much of the self-flagellation that senators did over their failures with social media, the US still suffers from chronic inertia in regulating tech. Altman, in other words, could tell lawmakers everything they wanted to hear because history suggests they probably wouldn’t pass any serious reforms anyway. If Congress is serious about tackling some of the ‘nightmare scenarios’ of a world where AI runs rampant, lawmakers should look to other policy ideas that were put on the table years ago. For example, the European Union proposed its 107-page AI Act in 2021, which sets rules for firms on things like disclosure of copyrighted material and auditing algorithms that violate people’s human rights. The EU Parliament will vote on it in mid-June.

US senators asked Altman about nutrition labels and scorecards for AI. Altman said it was “a great idea” although he did not have an outline to propose. But Margaret Mitchell and other researchers have been advocating for years model cards and procedures for testing AI processes. is going to be fully supported by Sam Altman,” Mitchell says. Real regulation will mean scrutinizing the data used to train AI models. That way, regulators can ensure that services like ChatGPT tools perform equally across different demographics such as gender and race. It would also force OpenAI to disclose its training data – something it has so far refused to do.

Mitchell’s work on evaluating AI systems was not cited on Tuesday. And the EU’s AI Act got only a passing mention from US senators — and not as a framework to emulate, but a system to beat: “Europe is way ahead of us,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal. “We need to lead.”

Such dogma helps explain why the US lags behind the EU on technology regulation. When lawmakers ignore the foundation laid elsewhere, instead grandiose about new policies pioneered in alliance with powerful technologists like the CEO of OpenAI, they succeed in garnering much hype about their supposed achievements to come. But they do not risk achieving anything.

Permi Olsson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology.