US senator urges AI company CEOs to take steps to address risks

THE chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday (Apr 26) urged CEOs of several artificial intelligence (AI) companies to prioritise security measures, combat bias, and responsibly roll out new technologies.

Democratic Senator Mark Warner raised concerns about potential risks posed by AI technology. “Beyond industry commitments, however, it is also clear that some level of regulation is necessary in this field,” said Warner, who sent letters to the CEOs of OpenAI, Scale AI, Meta Platforms, Alphabet’s Google, Apple, Stability AI, Midjourney, Anthropic, Percipient.ai, and Microsoft.

“With the increasing use of AI across large swaths of our economy, and the possibility for large language models to be steadily integrated into a range of existing systems, from healthcare to finance sectors, I see an urgent need to underscore the importance of putting security at the forefront of your work,” Warner said.

Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he had launched an effort to establish AI rules and address national security and education concerns, as use of programmes like ChatGPT becomes widespread.

Schumer, a Democrat, said in a statement he had drafted and circulated a “framework that outlines a new regulatory regime that would prevent potentially catastrophic damage to our country while simultaneously making sure the US advances and leads in this transformative technology.”

ChatGPT, an AI programme that recently grabbed the public’s attention for its ability to write answers quickly to a wide range of queries, in particular has attracted US lawmakers’ attention. It has become the fastest-growing consumer application in history with more than 100 million monthly active users.

Microsoft is a big investor in OpenAI, which created ChatGPT. The software company and Google have been pouring billions of US dollars into AI to gain an edge amid heightened competition in Silicon Valley. REUTERS