- In milestone, SpaceX 'catches' megarocket booster after test flight
- In a first, SpaceX 'catches' megarocket booster after test flight
- Bangladeshi Hindus shrug off attack worries to celebrate festival
- Ubisoft fears assassin's hit over falling sales
- Vietnam, China hold talks on calming South China Sea tensions
- SpaceX will try to 'catch' giant Starship rocket shortly before landing
- Japan's former empress Michiko discharged after surgery: reports
- Japan's former empress Michiko discharged after surgey: reports
- 'Little Gregory' murder haunts France 40 years on
- Tariffs, tax cuts, energy: What is in Trump's economic plan?
- Amazon wants to be everything to everyone
- Jewish school in Canada hit by gunfire for second time
- With medical report Harris seeks to play health card against Trump
- China-EU EV tariff talks in Brussels end with 'major differences': Beijing
- Buried Nazi past haunts Athens on liberation anniversary
- Harris to release medical report confirming fitness for presidency: campaign
- Nobel prize a timely reminder, Hiroshima locals say
- China offers $325 bn in fiscal stimulus for ailing economy
- Small Quebec company dominates one part of NHL hockey: jerseys
- Boeing to cut 10% of workforce as it sees big Q3 loss
- Want to film in Paris? No sexism allowed
- US, European markets rise as investors weigh rates, earnings
- In Colombia, children trade plastic waste for school supplies
- JPMorgan Chase profits top estimates, bank sees 'resilient' US economy
- Little progress at key meet ahead of COP29 climate summit
- 'Party atmosphere': Skygazers treated to another aurora show
- Kyrgyzstan opens rare probe into glacier destruction
- European Mediterranean states discuss Middle East, migration
- Thunberg leads pro-Palestinian, climate protest in Milan
- Stock markets diverge before China weekend briefing
- EU questions shopping app Temu over illegal products risk
- Han Kang's books sell out in South Korea after Nobel win
- Shanghai markets sink ahead of briefing on mixed day for Asia
- Investors, analysts eye bigger China stimulus at Saturday briefing
- Musk unveils robotaxi, pledges it 'before 2027'
- At least 11 dead in Florida but Hurricane Milton not as bad as feared
- Asian markets mixed after Wall St drop, Shanghai dips before briefing
- Automaker Stellantis says CEO will retire in 2026
- Musk's promised robotaxi unveil delayed
- On US coast, wind power foes embrace 'Save the Whales' argument
- At least 10 dead in Florida after Hurricane Milton spawns tornadoes
- Internet Archive reels from 'catastrophic' cyberattack, data breach
- Wall Street stocks retreat from records on US inflation data
- Israel strikes central Beirut, killing 22
- Solar storm could impact US hurricane recovery efforts: agency
- Delta eyes Election Day travel pullback as profits climb
- Florida battered by hurricane, floods but spared 'worst-case scenario'
- UK's William and Kate in first joint public engagement since cancer treatment
- Over 200 women in legal talks with Harrods over Fayed abuse claims
- A very stiff breeze: BBC says sorry for 20,000 kph wind forecast
ChatGPT's Altman pleads US Senate for AI rules
Sam Altman, the chief executive of ChatGPT's OpenAI, told US lawmakers on Tuesday that regulating artificial intelligence was essential, after his poem-writing chatbot stunned the world.
The lawmakers stressed their deepest fears of AI's developments, with a leading senator opening the hearing on Capitol Hill with a computer-generated voice -- which sounded remarkably similar to his own -- reading a text written by the bot.
"If you were listening from home, you might have thought that voice was mine and the words from me, but in fact, that voice was not mine," said Senator Richard Blumenthal.
Artificial intelligence technologies "are more than just research experiments. They are no longer fantasies of science fiction, they are real and present," said Blumenthal, a Democrat.
The latest figure to erupt from Silicon Valley, Altman's testimony in front of a US Senate judiciary subcommittee was far from the testy grilling given to the bosses of Facebook or TikTok when they visited Washington.
"If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong,” Altman said.
Tipped as an opportunity to educate lawmakers, Altman used the session to urge Congress to impose new rules on big tech, despite deep political divisions that for years have blocked legislation aimed at regulating the internet.
But governments worldwide are under pressure to move quickly after the release of ChatGPT, a bot that can churn out human-like content in an instant, went viral and both wowed and spooked users.
Altman has since become the global face of AI as he both pushes out his company's technology, including to Microsoft and scores of other companies, and warns that the work could have nefarious effects on society.
"OpenAI was founded on the belief that artificial intelligence has the potential to improve nearly every aspect of our lives, but also that it creates serious risks," Altman told the hearing.
He insisted that in time, generative AI developed by OpenAI will "address some of humanity's biggest challenges, like climate change and curing cancer."
However, given concerns about disinformation, job security and other hazards, "we think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models," he said.
- Go 'global' -
Altman suggested the US government might consider a combination of licensing and testing requirements before the release of powerful AI models, with a power to revoke permits if rules were broken.
He also recommended labeling and increased global coordination in setting up rules over the technology as well as the creation of a dedicated US agency to handle artificial intelligence.
"I think the US should lead here and do things first, but to be effective we do need something global," he added.
Blumenthal underlined that Europe had already advanced considerably with its AI Act that is set to go to a vote next month at the European Parliament.
A sprawling legislative text, the EU measure could see bans on biometric surveillance, emotion recognition and certain policing AI systems.
Crucially for OpenAI, US lawmakers underlined that it also seeks to put generative AI systems such as ChatGPT and DALL-E in a category requiring special transparency measures, such as notifications to users that the output was made by a machine.
OpenAI's DALL-E last year sparked an online rush to create lookalike Van Goghs and has made it possible to generate illustrations and graphics with a simple request.
Lawmakers also heard warnings that the technology was still in its early stages.
"There are more genies yet to come for more bottles," said New York University professor emeritus Gary Marcus, another panelist.
"We don't have machines that can really... improve themselves. We don't have machines that have self-awareness, and we might not ever want to go there," he said.
Christina Montgomery, chief privacy and trust officer at IBM, urged lawmakers against being too broad stroked in setting up rules on AI.
"A chatbot that can share restaurant recommendations or draft an email has different impacts on society than a system that supports decisions on credit, housing, or employment," she said.
M.Anderson--CPN