Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, testified Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law as the panel examines potential rules for the use of artificial intelligence. New York University professor emeritus Gary Marcus and Christina Montgomery, IBM’s chief privacy and trust officer, also testified at the hearing.

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Is on the oversight of artificial intelligence, the first in a series of hearings intended to write the rules of AI.

Our goal is to demystify and hold accountable those new technologies to avoid some of the mistakes of the past.

Too often, we have seen what happens when technology outpaces regulation.

The unbridled exploitation of personal data, the proliferation of disinformation, and the deepening of societal inequalities.

We have seen how algorithmic biases can perpetuate discrimination and prejudice and how the lack of transparency can undermine public trust.

If you were listening from home you might have thought that voice was mine and the words from me, but in fact, that voice was not mine.

And the audio was an AI voice cloning software trained on my floor speeches.

The remarks were written by ChatGPT when it was asked how I would open this hearing.

I asked chat GPT why did you pick those themes and that content and it answered and I'm quoting Blumenthal has a strong record in advocating for consumer protection and civil rights.

He has been vocal about issues such as data privacy and the potential for discrimination in algorithmic decision making.

Therefore, the statement emphasizes these aspects.

Altman, I appreciate CHAT GPT's endorsement.

In all seriousness, this apparent reasoning is pretty impressive.

I am sure that we'll look back in a decade and view chat GPT and GPT-4 like we do the first cell phone, those big clunky things that we used to carry around.

But we recognize that we are on the verge, really, of a new era.

The audio and my playing, it may strike you as curious or humorous, but what reverberated in my mind was, what if I had asked it, and what if it had provided an endorsement of Ukraine's surrendering, or Vladimir Putin's leadership?

That would have been really frightening, and the prospect is more than a little scary to use the word, Mr.

Altman, you have used yourself, and I think you have been very constructive in calling attention to the pitfalls as well as the promise, and that's the reason why we wanted you to be here today, and we thank you and our other witnesses for joining us.

For several months now, the public has been fascinated with GPT, DALI, and other AI tools.

These examples, like the homework done by CHAT-GPT, or the articles and op-eds that it can write, feel like novelties, But the underlying advancement of this era are more than just research experiments.

They are no longer fantasies of science fiction.

The promises of curing cancer or developing new understandings of physics and biology or modeling climate and weather.

All very encouraging and hopeful, but we also know the potential harms and we've seen them already.

Weaponized disinformation, housing discrimination, harassment of women and impersonation fraud, voice cloning, deep fakes.

These are the potential risks, despite the other rewards.

And for me, perhaps the biggest nightmare is the looming new industrial revolution the displacement of millions of workers the loss of huge numbers of jobs the need to prepare for this new industrial revolution in skill training and relocation that may be required.

And already industry leaders are calling attention to those challenges.

To quote Chat GPT, this is not necessarily the future that we want.

We need to maximize the good over the bad.

We had the same choice when we faced social media.

The result is predators on the internet, toxic content, exploiting children, creating dangers for them, and Senator Blackburn and I and others like Senator Durbin on the Judiciary Committee are trying to deal with it, Kids Online Safety Act, but Congress failed to meet the moment on social media.

Now we have the obligation to do it on AI before the threats and the risks become real.

Sensible safeguards are not in opposition to innovation.

Accountability is not a burden, far from it.

They are the foundation of how we can move ahead while protecting public trust.

They are how we can lead the world in technology and science, but also in promoting our democratic values.

Otherwise, in the absence of that trust, I think we may well lose both.

These are sophisticated technology, but there are basic expectations common in our law.

AI companies ought to be required to test their systems, disclose known risks, and allow independent researcher access.

We can establish scorecards and nutrition labels to encourage competition based on safety and trustworthiness.

Limitations on use, there are places where the risk of AI is so extreme that we ought to impose restriction or even ban their use, especially when it comes to commercial invasions of privacy for profit and decisions that affect people's livelihoods.

And of course, accountability or liability.

When AI companies and their clients cause harm, they should be held liable.

For example, Section 230, forcing companies to think ahead and be responsible for the ramifications of their business decisions can be the most powerful tool of all.

We ought to beware of the garbage, whether it's going into these platforms or coming out of them.

And the ideas that we develop in this hearing I think will provide a solid path forward.

I look forward to discussing them with you today and I will just finish on this note.

The AI industry doesn't have to wait for Congress.

I hope there are ideas and feedback from this discussion and from the industry and voluntary action, such as we've seen lacking in many social media platforms.

So I'm hoping that we will elevate rather than have a race to the bottom and I think these hearings will be an important part of this conversation.

The ranking member and I have agreed there should be more and we're going to invite other industry leaders.

Some have committed to come, experts, academics and the public we hope will participate.

And with that, I will turn to the ranking member, Senator Hawley.

I appreciate that several of you had long journeys to make in order to be here.

I want to thank Senator Blumenthal for convening this hearing, for being a leader on this topic.

You know, a year ago, we couldn't have had this hearing because the technology that we're talking about had not burst into public consciousness.

That gives us a sense, I think, of just how rapidly this technology that we're talking about today is changing and evolving and transforming our world right before our very eyes.

I was talking with someone Just last night, a researcher in the field of psychiatry who was pointing out to me that the chat GPT and generative AI, these large language models, it's really like the invention of the internet in scale, at least, at least, and potentially far, far more significant than that.

We could be looking at 1 of the most significant technological innovations in human history.

And I think my question is, what kind of an innovation is it going to be?

Is it gonna be like the printing press that diffused knowledge and power and learning widely across the landscape that empowered ordinary everyday individuals that led to greater flourishing, that led above all to greater liberty?

Or is it gonna be more like the atom bomb?

Huge technological breakthrough, but the consequences, severe, terrible, continue to haunt us to this day.

I don't know the answer to that question.

I don't think any of us in the room know the answer to that question because I think the answer has not yet been written.

And to a certain extent, it's up to us here and to us as the American people to write the answer.

How will we use it to actually harness the power of technological innovation for the good of the American people?

For the liberty of the American people not for the power of the few you know, I was I was reminded of the psychologist and writer Carl Jung who said at the beginning of the last century that our ability for technological innovation, our capacity for technological revolution had far outpaced our ethical and moral ability to apply and harness the technology we developed.

I think the story of the 20th century largely bore him out.

And I just wonder what will we say as we look back at this moment about these new technologies, about generative AI, about these language models, and about the hosts of other AI capacities that are even right now underdeveloped, but not just in this country, but in China, the countries of our adversaries, and all around the world.

And I think that the question that Jung posed is really the question that faces us.

Will we strike that balance between technological innovation and our ethical and moral responsibility?

To humanity to Liberty to the freedom of this country, and I hope that today's hearing will take us a step closer to that answer Thank you, Mr.

I'm going to turn to the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Ranking Member, Senator Graham, if they have opening remarks as well.

Thank you very much, and Senator Hawley as well.

Last week in this committee, full committee, Senate Judiciary Committee, We dealt with an issue that had been waiting for attention for almost 2 decades And that is what to do with the social media when it comes to the abuse of children.

We had 4 bills initially that were considered by this committee, and what may be history in the making, we passed all 4 bills with unanimous roll calls.

I can't remember another time when we've done that, on an issue that important.

It's an indication, I think, of the important position of this committee in the national debate on issues that affect every single family and affect our future in a profound way.

1989 was a historic watershed year in America, because that's when Seinfeld arrived.

And we had a sitcom which was supposedly about little or nothing, which turned out to be enduring.

I like to watch it, obviously, and I always marvel when they show the phones that he used in 1989, and I think about those in comparison to what we carry around in our pockets today.

And I guess the question as I look at that is, does this change in phone technology that we've witnessed through the sitcom really exemplify a profound change in America, still unanswered.

But the very basic question we face is whether or not this issue of AI is a quantitative change in technology or a qualitative change.

The suggestions that I have heard from experts in the field suggest it's qualitative.

Is it so disruptive that we need to treat it differently than other forms of innovation?

And the second starting point is 1 that's humbling, and that is the fact when you look at the record of Congress in dealing with innovation, technology, and rapid change, we're not designed for that.

In fact, the Senate was not created for that purpose, but just the opposite.

Well, I've heard of the potential, the positive potential of AI, and it is enormous.

You can go through lists of the deployment of technology that would say that an idea you can sketch on a website, for a website on a napkin, can generate functioning code.

Pharmaceutical companies could use the technology to identify new candidates to treat disease, the list goes on and on.

And then of course the danger, and it's profound as well.

So I'm glad that this hearing has taken place, and I think it's important for all of us to participate.

I'm glad that it's a bipartisan approach.

We're going to have to scramble to keep up with the pace of innovation in terms of our government public response to it, but this is a great start.

It is very much a bipartisan approach, very deeply and broadly bipartisan.

In that spirit, I'm going to turn to my friend, Senator Graham.

We're very grateful to you for being here.

Sam Altman is the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, the AI research and deployment company behind CHAT-GPT and DALI.

Altman was president of the early stage startup accelerator Y Combinator from 1914, I'm sorry, 2014 to 2019.

Christina Montgomery is IBM's Vice President and Chief Privacy and trust officer overseeing the company's global privacy program policies, compliance, and strategy.

She also chairs IBM's AI ethics board, a multidisciplinary team responsible for the governance of AI and emerging technologies.

Christina has served in various roles at IBM, including corporate secretary to the company's board of directors.

She is a global leader in AI ethics and governments.

Montgomery also is a member of the United States Chamber of Commerce AI Commission and the United States National AI Advisory Committee, which was established in 2022 to advise the president and the National AI Initiative Office on a range of topics related to AI.

Gary Marcus is a leading voice in artificial intelligence.

He's a scientist, best-selling author, and entrepreneur, founder of the robust AI and geometric AI acquired by Uber, if I'm not mistaken.

An emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at NYU, Mr.

Marcus is well known for his challenges to contemporary AI, anticipating many of the current limitations decades in advance and for his research in human language, development, and cognitive neuroscience.

And as you may know, our custom on the Judiciary Committee is to swear in our witnesses before they testify.

So if you would all please rise and raise your right hand.

You solemnly swear that the testimony that you are going to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us God.

Altman, we're going to begin with you if that's okay.

Thank you, Chairman Blumenthal, Ranking Member Hawley, members of the Judiciary Committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about large neural networks.

It's really an honor to be here, even more so in the moment than I expected.

I'm the Chief Executive Officer of OpenAI.

OpenAI was founded on the belief that artificial intelligence has the potential to improve nearly every aspect of our lives, but also that it creates serious risks we have to work together to manage.

We're here because people love this technology.

We think it can be a printing press moment.

OpenAI is an unusual company, and we set it up that way because AI is an unusual technology.

We are governed by a nonprofit, and our activities are driven by our mission and our charter, which commit us to working to ensure that the broad distribution of the benefits of AI and to maximizing the safety of AI systems.

We are working to build tools that 1 day can help us make new discoveries and address some of humanity's biggest challenges, like climate change and curing cancer.

Our current systems aren't yet capable of doing these things, but it has been immensely gratifying to watch many people around the world get so much value from what these systems can already do today.

We love seeing people use our tools to create, to learn, to be more productive.

We're very optimistic that there are going to be fantastic jobs in the future and that current jobs can get much better.

We also have seen what developers are doing to improve lives.

For example, Be My Eyes used our new multimodal technology in GPT-4 to help visually impaired individuals navigate their environment.

We believe that the benefits of the tools we have deployed so far vastly outweigh the risks, but ensuring their safety is vital to our work, and we make significant efforts to ensure that safety is built into our systems at all levels.

Before releasing any new system, OpenAI conducts extensive testing, engages external experts for detailed reviews and independent audits, improves the model's behavior, and implements robust safety and monitoring systems.

Before we released GPT-4, our latest model, we spent over 6 months conducting extensive evaluations, external red teaming, and dangerous capability testing.

We are proud of the progress that we made.

GPT-4 is more likely to respond helpfully and truthfully and refuse harmful requests than any other widely deployed model of similar capability.

However, we think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models.

Government might consider a combination of licensing and testing requirements for development and release of AI models above a threshold of capabilities.

There are several other areas I mentioned in my written testimony where I believe that companies like ours can partner with governments, including ensuring that the most powerful AI models adhere to a set of safety requirements, facilitating processes to develop and update safety measures, and examining opportunities for global coordination.

And as you mentioned, I think it's important that companies have their own responsibility here no matter what Congress does.

This is a remarkable time to be working on artificial intelligence.

But as this technology advances, we understand that people are anxious about how it could change the way we live.

But we believe that we can and must work together to identify and manage the potential downsides so that we can all enjoy the tremendous upsides.

It is essential that powerful AI is developed with democratic values in mind and this means that US leadership is critical.

I believe that we will be able to mitigate the risks in front of us and really capitalize on this technology's potential to grow the US economy and the world's and I look forward to working with you all to meet this moment, and I look forward to answering your questions.

Chairman Blumenthal, Ranking Member Hawley, and members of the subcommittee, Thank you for today's opportunity to present.

AI is not new, but it's certainly having a moment.

Recent breakthroughs in generative AI and the technology's dramatic surge in the public attention has rightfully raised serious questions at the heart of today's hearing.

What are AI's potential impacts on society?

What about misinformation, misuse, or harmful content generated by AI systems?

Senators, these are the right questions, and I applaud you for convening today's hearing to address them head on.

While AI may be having its moment, the moment for government to play a role has not passed us by.

This period of focused public attention on AI is precisely the time to define and build the right guardrails to protect people and their interests.

But at its core, AI is just a tool, and tools can serve different purposes.

To that end, IBM urges Congress to adopt a precision regulation approach to AI.

This means establishing rules to govern the deployment of AI in specific use cases, not regulating the technology itself.

First, different rules for different risks.

The strongest regulation should be applied to use cases with the greatest risks to people and society.

There must be clear guidance on AI uses or categories of AI supported activity that are inherently high risk.

This common definition is key to enabling a clear understanding of what regulatory requirements will apply in different use cases and contexts.

Consumers should know when they're interacting with an AI system and that they have recourse to engage with a real person should they so desire.

No person anywhere should be tricked into interacting with an AI system.

For higher risk use cases, companies should be required to conduct impact assessments that show how their systems perform against test for bias and other ways that they could potentially impact the public and to attest that they've done so.

By following risk-based, use case-specific approach at the core of precision regulation, Congress can mitigate the potential risks of AI without hindering innovation.

But businesses also play a critical role in ensuring the responsible deployment of AI.

Companies active in developing or using AI must have strong internal governance, including, among other things, designating a lead AI ethics official responsible for an organization's trustworthy AI strategy, standing up an ethics board or a similar function as a centralized clearinghouse for resources to help guide implementation of that strategy.

IBM has taken both of these steps and we continue calling on our industry peers to follow suit.

Our AI ethics board plays a critical role in overseeing internal AI governance processes, creating reasonable guardrails to ensure we introduce technology into the world in a responsible and safe manner.

It provides centralized governance and accountability while still being flexible enough to support decentralized initiatives across IBM's global operations.

We do this because we recognize that society grants our license to operate.

And with AI, the stakes are simply too high.

We must build, not undermine the public trust.

The era of AI cannot be another era of move fast and break things.

But we don't have to slam the brakes on innovation either.

These systems are within our control today, as are the solutions.

What we need at this pivotal moment is clear, reasonable policy and sound guardrails.

These guardrails should be matched with meaningful steps by the business community to do their part.

Congress and the business community must work together to get this right.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your questions.

I come as a scientist, someone who's founded AI companies, and as someone who genuinely loves AI, but who is increasingly worried.

There are benefits, but we don't yet know whether they will outweigh the risks.

Fundamentally, these new systems are going to be destabilizing.

They can and will create persuasive lies at a scale humanity has never seen before.

Outsiders will use them to affect our elections, insiders to manipulate our markets and our political systems.

Chatbots will also clandestinely shape our opinions, potentially exceeding what social media can do.

Choices about data sets that AI companies use will have enormous unseen influence.

Those who choose the data will make the rules, shaping society in subtle but powerful ways.

There are other risks too, many stemming from the inherent unreliability of current systems.

A law professor, for example, was accused by a chatbot of sexual harassment, untrue.

And it pointed to a Washington Post article that didn't even exist.

The more that that happens, the more that anybody can deny anything.

As 1 prominent lawyer told me on Friday, defendants are starting to claim that plaintiffs are making up legitimate evidence.

These sorts of allegations undermine the abilities of juries to decide what or who to believe and contribute to the undermining of democracy.

Poor medical advice could have serious consequences too.

An open-source large-language model recently seems to have played a role in a person's decision to take their own life.

The large language model asked the human, if you wanted to die, why didn't you do it earlier?

And then followed up with, were you thinking of me when you overdosed?

Without ever referring the patient to the human help that was obviously needed.

Another system rushed out and made available to millions of children told a person posing as a 13-year-old how to lie to her parents about a trip with a 31-year-old man.

Further threats continue to emerge regularly.

A month After GPT-4 was released, OpenAI released ChatGPT plugins, which quickly led others to develop something called AutoGPT, with direct access to the internet, the ability to write source code, and increased powers of automation.

This may well have drastic and difficult to predict security consequences.

What criminals are gonna do here is to create counterfeit people.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testifies at Senate artificial intelligence hearing | full video