OpenAI, the company responsible for developing ChatGPT and GPT technology, has called for international regulation of “super-intelligent” artificial intelligences. For the company’s founders, AIs need a respected regulatory body at the level of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). OpenAI’s proposal is different from the letter that called for the suspension of artificial intelligence research.
Unlike the charter for halting the development of AI technologies, OpenAI’s leadership wants artificial intelligences to continue evolving as governments work toward the creation of a regulatory body. The company wants this body to protect humanity from creating technology that can destroy it—but not necessarily Terminator-style.
Request for regulation by OpenAI came from directors
The post on OpenAI’s website, calling for strict regulation of artificial intelligences, is signed by Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, all of whom hold senior positions at the company.
The three leaders of OpenAI claim that while this international body is not created, the companies that are developing artificial intelligences need to work together. This cooperation aims to maintain the security and integration of AIs with society. The letter also suggests that this “teamwork” can determine a “rate of evolution” of technologies as governments prepare the creation of the body.
By comparison with the IAEA, an international agency that oversees AIs, as the company’s directors suggest, would be linked to some division of the United Nations (UN). Today, the IAEA is an autonomous U.N. body, closer to the General Assembly and Security Council — visiting on some occasions the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on the front of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Risks to humanity do not involve “machine revolution”
The risks to humanity, reason cited by OpenAI for the creation of a regulatory body, are not restricted to a scenario of “Terminator” or AIs enslaving humans. In fact, the company doesn’t even comment on what that scenario would look like.
The “destruction of humanity” can also be visualized in a scenario of social collapse. With AIs taking over the work of thousands of people, the unemployed population can fall into poverty, leading to social, existential and security risks for nations unprepared to deal with the advancement of technology. This is the case in all countries today.
