London/Stockholm (Reuters) – Sam Altman, CEO of Microsoft-backed (MSFT.O) OpenAI, has been pleading with legislators all over the globe to create new regulations for the technology for months.
He warned on Wednesday that if the EU “overregulated,” the manufacturer of the ChatGPT would quit.
Altman has been travelling throughout Europe for the last week, meeting with leading politicians in France, Spain, Poland, Germany, and the UK to talk about ChatGPT’s development and the future of AI.
More than six months after OpenAI first introduced the world to ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot, concerns about its potential have sparked excitement and worry – and put the company at odds with authorities.
Brussels, where EU authorities are drafting the long-awaited EU AI Act, which may be the first set of regulations governing AI internationally, was one location Altman missed this week.
Altman postponed a trip to Brussels, according to two persons with knowledge of the situation. An inquiry for comments was not answered by OpenAI.
“The current draught of the EU AI Act would be over-regulating, but we have heard it’s going to get pulled back,” Altman said on Wednesday in London.
Altman’s assertions were contested by the EU legislators who drafted the AI Act. “I don’t see any dilution happening anytime soon,” Dragos Tudorache, a Romanian member of the European Parliament who is in charge of overseeing the creation of EU proposals, told Reuters.
Nevertheless, he said, “We are pleased to bring Mr. Altman to Parliament so he may express his views and learn what European legislators think on these topics.
Thierry Breton, the head of the EU industry, also denounced the threat, claiming that the draught regulations are not up to negotiation.
In the midst of Altman’s hectic schedule of meetings with international leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, OpenAI is anticipated to debate in further depth how AI should be governed on Thursday.
‘BLACKMAILED’ LAWMAKERS WILL NOT BE
The draught EU bill was also worked on by Dutch MEP Kim van Sparrentak, who said that she and her colleagues “shouldn’t let ourselves be blackmailed by American companies.”
“If OpenAI can’t comply with basic data governance, transparency, safety, and security requirements, then their systems aren’t fit for the European market,” she added.
By the end of February, ChatGPT had amassed the fastest-rising user base of any consumer programme ever.
The first time OpenAI and authorities disagreed was in March, when Italian data authority Garante banned the app locally after charging OpenAI of violating European privacy laws. After the corporation implemented new user privacy safeguards, ChatGPT was able to resume operations.
In the meanwhile, recent amendments to the EU’s AI Act mandate that any business utilising generative tools, such as ChatGPT, reveal any copyrighted data used to train its systems.
The act’s draught was approved by EU lawmakers earlier this month. The exact provisions of the legislation will be negotiated by member states, the European Commission, and Parliament.
Before the law is perhaps ratified later this year, individual member states like France or Poland may also request revisions via the Council of Europe.
PLANS ‘FULL SWING’
Even while the law has been in the works for a while, additional clauses aimed especially at generating tools were only developed a few weeks before a crucial vote on the proposals.
According to a previous story from Reuters, some MPs first recommended outright outlawing the use of copyrighted content when training generative AI models, but this idea was dropped in favour of stricter disclosure guidelines.
“These regulations primarily deal with transparency, which assures the reliability of both the AI and the organisation developing it. I don’t see why any business would be reluctant to be transparent,” Tudorache remarked.
As parliamentarians sorted through their recommendations, Nils Rauer, a technology partner at the law firm Pinsent Masons, said it was “no surprise” Altman had made his views.
“It is doubtful that OpenAI would ignore Europe. The EU is just too significant economically, he said. “With close to 500 million people and a 15 trillion euro ($16.51 trillion) economy, you cannot carve out the single market,”
Thursday found Altman in Munich, Germany, where he claimed to have met with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
While Altman may be attempting to influence specific nations with his agenda, according to Sergey Lagodinsky, a German MEP who also worked on the legislation, Brussels’ intentions to regulate the technology were “in full swing.”
Of course, there could be some changes, he remarked. But I don’t think they’ll affect the overall course.