Tesla
CEO Elon Musk says there was "overwhelming consensus" for regulation
on artificial intelligence after tech heavyweights gathered in Washington to
discuss AI.
Tech bosses attending the
meeting included Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Google boss Sundar Pichai.
Microsoft's former CEO Bill
Gates and Microsoft's current CEO Satya Nadella were also in attendance.
The Wednesday meeting with
US lawmakers was held behind closed doors.
The forum was convened by
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and included tech leaders as well as
civil rights advocates.
The power of artificial
intelligence - for both good and bad - has been the subject of keen interest
from politicians around the world.
In May, Sam Altman, the CEO
of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, testified before a US Senate committee,
describing the potential pitfalls of the new technology.
ChatGPT and other similar
programs can create incredibly human-like answers to questions - but can also
be wildly inaccurate.
"I think if this
technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong...we want to be vocal about
that," Mr Altman said. "We want to work with the government to
prevent that from happening," he said.
There are fears that the
technology could lead to mass layoffs, turbocharge fraud, and make
misinformation more convincing.
AI companies have also been
criticized for training their models on data scraped from the internet without
permission or payment to creators.
In April, Mr Musk told the
BBC: "I think there should be a regulatory body established for overseeing
AI to make sure that it does not present a danger to the public."
In Wednesday's meeting, he
said he wanted a "referee" for artificial intelligence.
"I think we'll
probably see something happen. I don't know on what timeframe or exactly how it
will manifest itself," he told reporters after.
Mr. Zuckerberg said that
Congress "should engage with AI to support innovation and safeguards".
He added it was
"better than the standard is set by American companies that can work with
our government to shape these models on important issues".
Republican Senator Mike
Rounds said it would take time for Congress to act.
"Are we ready to go
out and write legislation? Absolutely not," Mr Rounds said. "We're
not there."
Democrat Senator Cory
Booker said all participants agreed "the government has a regulatory
role" but crafting legislation would be a challenge.
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