The UK and US have intervened in the race to develop ever more powerful artificial intelligence (AI) technology, as the British competition watchdog launched a review of the sector and the White House advised tech firms of their fundamental responsibility to develop safe products.
Regulators are under mounting pressure to intervene, as the emergence of AI-powered language generators such as ChatGPT raises concerns about the potential spread of misinformation, a rise in fraud and the impact on the job market, with Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk among nearly 30,000 signatories to a letter published last month urging a pause in significant projects.
The British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Thursday said it would look at the underlying systems — or foundation models — behind AI tools.
Photo: Bloomberg
The initial review, described by one legal expert as a “pre-warning” to the sector, is scheduled to publish its findings in September.
On the same day, the US government announced measures to address the risks in AI development, as US Vice President Kamala Harris met chief executives at the forefront of the industry’s rapid advances.
In a statement, the White House said firms developing the technology had a “fundamental responsibility to make sure their products are safe before they are deployed or made public.”
The meeting capped a week during which a succession of scientists and business leaders issued warnings about the speed at which the technology could disrupt established industries.
On Monday, Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of AI,” quit his position at Google owner Alphabet Inc to speak more freely about the technology’s dangers, while Patrick Vallance, an outgoing scientific adviser to the British Government, urged ministers to “get ahead” of the profound social and economic changes that could be triggered by AI, saying the impact on jobs could be as big as that of the Industrial Revolution.
CMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell said AI had the potential to “transform” the way businesses competed, but that consumers must be protected.
“AI has burst into the public consciousness over the past few months, but has been on our radar for some time,” she said. “It’s crucial that the potential benefits of this transformative technology are readily accessible to UK businesses and consumers, while people remain protected from issues like false or misleading information.”
ChatGPT and Google’s rival Bard service are prone to delivering false information in response to users’ prompts, while concerns have been raised about AI-generated voice scams.
NewsGuard Technologies Inc, which operates a browser extension that rates the credibility of news and information Web sites, this week said that chatbots pretending to be journalists were running almost 50 AI-generated “content farms.”
The British watchdog’s review would look at how the markets for foundation models could evolve, what opportunities and risks there are for consumers and competition, and formulate “guiding principles” to support competition and protect consumers.
The leading players in AI are Microsoft Corp, ChatGPT developer OpenAI — in which Microsoft is an investor — and Google, which owns a world-leading AI business in UK-based DeepMind, while leading AI start-ups include Anthropic PBC and Stability AI Inc.
Leading AI developers have also agreed to their systems being publicly evaluated at this year’s Defcon 31 cybersecurity conference. Companies that have agreed to participate include OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Stability AI.
“This independent exercise will provide critical information to researchers and the public about the impacts of these models,” the White House said.
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