WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — A California congressman is pushing for AI reform.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Rep. Tony Cardenas said he’s worried AI tools like ChatGPT could threaten democracy, rip off content creators, and enhance scams.
Cardenas is not the first. For years, there have been lawmakers attempting to regulate the industry in some way, but as one expert put it, there was little press and AI wasn’t top of mind. That’s since changed.
"My worst fears are that we cause significant we, the field, the technology, the industry cause significant harm to the world. I think that could happen in a lot of different ways,” Open AI CEO Sam Altman said.
CEO of OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, expressed concerns over AI technology himself in a May congressional hering. He's hoping for regulation.
“We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening,” Altman said.
Cardenas said he is putting together a package of bills to address some of the concerns. One is to make sure content creators are compensated for their work.
“In regards to paintings, in regards to photos, you see a lot of where it creates this new image from the generator, but it's really taking parts of images that already exist," Senior Counsel at Electronic Privacy Information Center Ben Winters said. "It's not creating it fully whole cloth.”
Another would make it so that AI generated material is clearly identified and labeled.
“You really will start to already have start to see that, especially in other elections, where they will make someone like Trump or Biden or something to that effect, say something that they're not saying. And it's really going to be a difficult thing in regards to trust,” he said.
Winters said congress has done little in the past.
“Popularity of tools like ChatGPT, there have been a lot of lawmakers that are starting to listen starting to think about some ways to regulate A.I," Winters said. "Which we have been thinking about and calling for for 20-30 years for privacy and AI.”
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