Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI
Here are my notes from the last hour, watching on C-SPAN telecast, which is archived here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.c-span.org&#x2F;video&#x2F;?528117-1&#x2F;openai-ceo-testifies-artificial-intelligence" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.c-span.org&#x2F;video&#x2F;?528117-1&#x2F;openai-ceo-testifies-...</a><p>- Mazie Hirono, Junior Senator from Hawaii, has very thoughtful questions. Very impressive.<p>- Gary Marcus also up there speaking with Sam Altman of OpenAI.<p>- So far, Sen. Hirono and Sen. Padilla seem very wary of regulating AI at this time.<p>- Very concerned about not &quot;replicating social media&#x27;s failure&quot;, why is it so biased and inequitable. Much more reasonable concerns.<p>- Also responding to questions is Christina Montgomery, chair of IBM&#x27;s AI Ethics Board.<p>- &quot;Work to generate a representative set of values from around the world.&quot;<p>- Sen. Ossoff asking for definition of &quot;scope&quot;.<p>- &quot;We could draw a line at systems that need to be licensed. Above this amount of compute... Define some capability threshold... Models that are less capable, we don&#x27;t want to stop open source.&quot;<p>- Ossoff wants specifics.<p>- &quot;Persuade, manipulate, influence person&#x27;s beliefs.&quot; should be licensed.<p>- Ossoff asks about predicting human behavior, i.e. use in law enforcement, &quot;It&#x27;s very important we understand these are tools, not to take away human judgment.&quot;<p>- &quot;We have no national privacy law.&quot; — Sen Ossof &quot;Do you think we need one?&quot;<p>- Sam &quot;Yes. User should be able to opt out of companies using data. Easy to delete data. If you don&#x27;t want your data use to train, you have right to exclude it.&quot;<p>- &quot;There should be more ways to have your data taken down off the public web.&quot; —Sam<p>- &quot;Limits on what a deployed model is capable of and also limits on what it will answer.&quot; — Sam<p>- &quot;Companies who depend upon usage time, maximize engagement 
with perverse results. I would humbly advise you to get way ahead of this, the safety of children. We will look very harshly on technology that harms children.&quot;<p>- &quot;We&#x27;re not an advertising based model.&quot; —Sam<p>- &quot;Requirements about how the values of these systems are set and how they respond to questions.&quot; —Sam<p>- Sen. Booker up now.<p>- &quot;For congress to do nothing, which no one is calling for here, would be exceptional.&quot;<p>- &quot;What kind of regulation?&quot;<p>- &quot;We don&#x27;t want to slow things down.&quot;<p>- &quot;A nimble agency. You can imagine a need for that, right?&quot;<p>- &quot;Yes.&quot; —Christina Montgomery<p>- &quot;No way to put this genie back in the bottle.&quot; Sen. Booker<p>- &quot;There are more genies yet to come from more bottles.&quot; —
Gary Marcus<p>- &quot;We need new tools, new science, transparency.&quot; —Gary Marcus<p>- &quot;We did know that we wanted to build this with humanity&#x27;s best interest at heart. We could really deeply transform the world.&quot; —Sam<p>- &quot;Are you ever going to do ads?&quot; —Sen Booker<p>- &quot;I wouldn&#x27;t say never....&quot; —Sam<p>- &quot;Massive corporate concentration is really terrifying.... I see OpenAI backed by Microsoft, Anthropic is backed by Google. I&#x27;m really worried about that. Are you worried?&quot; —Sen Booker?<p>- &quot;There is a real risk of technocracy combined with oligarchy.&quot; —Gary Marcus<p>- &quot;Creating alignment dataset has got to come very broadly from society.&quot; —Sam 
Senator Welch from Vermont up now<p>- &quot;I&#x27;ve come to the conclusion it&#x27;s impossible for congress to keep up with the speed of technology.&quot;<p>- &quot;The spread of disinformation is the biggest threat.&quot;<p>- &quot;We absolutely have to have an agency. Scope has to be defined by congress. Unless we have an agency, we really don&#x27;t have much of a defense against the bad stuff, and the bad stuff will come.&quot;<p>- Use of regulatory authority and the recognition that it can be used for good, but there&#x27;s also legitimate concern of regulation being a negative influence.&quot;<p>- &quot;What are some of the perils of an agency?&quot;<p>- &quot;America has got to continue to lead.&quot;<p>- &quot;I believe it&#x27;s possible to do both, have a global view. We want America to lead.&quot;<p>- &quot;We still need open source to comply, you can still do harm with a smaller model.&quot;<p>- &quot;Regulatory capture. Greenwashing.&quot; —Gary Marcus<p>- &quot;Risk of not holding companies accountable for the harms they are causing today.&quot; —Christina Montgomery<p>- Lindsay Graham, very pro-licensing, &quot;You don&#x27;t build a nuclear power plant without a license, you don&#x27;t build an AI without a license.&quot;<p>- Sen Blumenthal brings up Anti-Trust legislation.<p>- Blumenthal mentions how classified briefings already include AI threats.<p>- &quot;For every successful regulation, you can think of five failures. I hope our experience here will be different.&quot;<p>- &quot;We need to grapple with the hard questions here. This has brought them up, but not answered them.&quot;<p>- &quot;Section 230&quot;<p>- &quot;How soon do you think gen AI will be self-aware?&quot; —Sen Blumenthal<p>- &quot;We don&#x27;t understand what self-awareness is.&quot; —Gary Marcus<p>- &quot;Could be 2 years, could be 20.&quot;<p>- &quot;What are the highest risk areas? Ban? Strict rules?&quot;<p>- &quot;The space around misinformation. Knowing what content was generated by AI.&quot; —Christina Montgomery<p>- &quot;Medical misinformation, hallucination. Psychiatric advice. Ersatz therapists. Internet access for tools, okay for search. Can they make orders? Can they order chemicals? Long-term risks.&quot; —Gary Marcus<p>- &quot;Generative AI can manipulate the manipulators.&quot; —Blumenthal<p>- &quot;Transparency. Accountability. Limits on use. Good starting point?&quot; —Blumenthal<p>- &quot;Industry should&#x27;t wait for congress.&quot; —C. Montgomery<p>- &quot;We don&#x27;t have transparency yet. We&#x27;re not doing enough to enforce it.&quot; —G. Marcus<p>- &quot;AGI closer than a lot of people appreciate.&quot; —Blumenthall<p>- Gary and Sam are getting along and like each other now.<p>- Josh Hawley<p>- Talking about loss of jobs, invasion of personal privacy, 
manipulation of behavior, opinion, and degradation of free elections in America.<p>- &quot;Are they right to ask for a pause?&quot;<p>- &quot;It did not call for a ban on all AI research or all AI, only on very specific thing, like GPT-5.&quot; -G Marcus<p>- &quot;Moratorium we should focus on is deployment. Focus on safety.&quot; —G. Marcus<p>- &quot;Without external review.&quot;<p>- &quot;We waited more than 6 months to deploy GPT-4. I think the frame of the letter is wrong.&quot; —Sam<p>- Seems to not like the arbitrariness of &quot;six months.&quot;<p>- &quot;I&#x27;m not sure how practical it is to pause.&quot; —C. Montgomery<p>- Hawley brings up regulatory capture, usually get controlled by people they&#x27;re supposed to be watching. &quot;Why don&#x27;t we just let people sue you?&quot;<p>- If you were harmed by AI, why not just sue?<p>- &quot;You&#x27;re not protected by section 230.&quot;<p>- &quot;Are clearer laws a good thing? Definitely, yes.&quot; —Sam<p>- &quot;Would certainly make a lot of lawyers wealthy.&quot; —G. Marcus<p>- &quot;You think it&#x27;d be slower than congress?&quot; —Hawley<p>- Copyright, wholesale misinformation laws, market manipulation?&quot; Which laws apply? System not thought through? Maybe 230 does apply? We don&#x27;t know.<p>- &quot;We can fix that.&quot; —Hawley<p>- &quot;AI is not a shield.&quot; —C. Montgomery<p>- &quot;Whether they use a tool or a human, they&#x27;re responsible.&quot; —C. Montgomery<p>- &quot;Safeguards and protections, yes. A flat stop sign? I would be very, very worried about.&quot; —Blumenthall<p>- &quot;There will be no pause.&quot; Sen. Booker &quot;Nobody&#x27;s pausing.&quot;<p>- &quot;I would agree.&quot; Gary Marcus<p>- &quot;I have a lot of concerns about corporate intention.&quot; Sen Booker<p>- &quot;What happens when these companies that already control so much of our lives when they are dominating this technology?&quot; Booker<p>- Sydney really freaked out Gary. He was more freaked out when MS didn&#x27;t withdraw Sydney like it did Tay.<p>- &quot;I need to work on policy. This is frightening.&quot; G Marcus<p>- Cory admits he is a tech bro (lists relationships with investors, etc)<p>- &quot;The free market is not what it should be.&quot; —C. Booker<p>- &quot;That&#x27;s why we started OpenAI.&quot; —Sam 
&quot;We think putting this in the hands of a lot of people rather than the hands of one company.&quot; —Sam<p>- &quot;This is a new platform. In terms of using the models, people building are doing incredible things. I can&#x27;t believe you get this much technology for so little money.&quot; —Sam<p>- &quot;Most industries resist reasonable regulation. The only way we&#x27;re going to see democratization of values is if we enforce safety measures.&quot; —Cory Booker<p>- &quot;I sense a willingness to participate that is genuine and authentic.&quot; —Blumenthal