The intervention of governments to regulate the development and use of artificial intelligence will be “definitive”, “in order to limit the risks” this technology represents, Sam Attleman, the president and CEO of OpenAI, creator of the artificial intelligence application ChatGPT, admitted before a US congressional committee on Tuesday.

“It is important that the most powerful artificial intelligence is developed with democratic values,” the young businessman estimated, “which means that US leadership is decisive,” he said during his hearing by the congressional committee in which he appeared for the first time.

The availability of ChatGPT on the Internet in November has multiplied public and business interest in so-called generative artificial intelligence, i.e. technology capable of generating content, text, images, sounds or videos, after drawing material from huge databases .

Sam Altman

Productive AI is unleashing passions, and many are concerned about the potential consequences across a range of professions, with potential mass job cuts and wider societal implications.

“Artificial intelligence has the potential to improve almost all aspects of our lives, but also causes serious risks”, admitted Sam Altman, during his hearing by the Senate subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law.

“One of my biggest fears is that we, this industry, this technology, lest we cause significant damage in society,” Altman said. As he warned, “if this technology goes wrong, it can go very wrong… And we want to work together with the government to prevent that from happening.”

Elections are a “significant area of ​​concern” and “some regulation would be quite wise,” he said.

The 30-year-old developer and investor recalled that although OpenAI LP, the entity that developed ChatGPT, is a startup private company, it is controlled by a non-profit organization “which forces us to work towards the wide distribution of the benefits of artificial intelligence and to maximize the security of systems based on artificial intelligence”.

Sam Altman has often stated that he is in favor of establishing a regulatory framework for artificial intelligence, preferably at the international level. “I know it seems naive to suggest something like that, it seems very difficult” to achieve, but “there are precedents,” he explained, citing the example of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).