For four years, Jacob Hilton worked for one of the most influential startups in the Bay Area—OpenAI. His research helped test and improve the truthfulness of AI models such as ChatGPT. He believes artificial intelligence can benefit society, but he also recognizes the serious risks if the technology is left unchecked.
Hilton was among 13 current and former OpenAI and Google employees who this month signed an open letter that called for more whistleblower protections, citing broad confidentiality agreements as problematic.
“The basic situation is that employees, the people closest to the technology, they’re also the ones with the most to lose from being retaliated against for speaking up,” says Hilton, 33, now a researcher at the nonprofit Alignment Research Center, who lives in Berkeley, California.
California legislators are rushing to address such concerns through roughly 50 AI-related bills, many of which aim to place safeguards around the rapidly evolving technology, which lawmakers say could cause societal harm.
However, groups representing large tech companies argue that the proposed legislation could stifle innovation and creativity, causing California to lose its competitive edge and dramatically change how AI is developed in the state.
The effects of artificial intelligence on employment, society and culture are wide reaching, and that’s reflected in the number of bills circulating the Legislature. They cover a range of AI-related fears, including job replacement, data security and racial discrimination.
One bill, co-sponsored by the Teamsters, aims to mandate human oversight on driverless heavy-duty trucks. A bill backed by the Service Employees International Union attempts to ban the automation or replacement of jobs by AI systems at call centers that provide public benefit services, such as Medi-Cal. Another bill, written by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, would require companies developing large AI models to do safety testing.
The plethora of bills come after politicians were criticized for not cracking down hard enough on social media companies until it was too late. During the Biden administration, federal and state Democrats have become more aggressive in going after big tech firms.
“We’ve seen with other technologies that we don’t do anything until well after there’s a big problem,” Wiener said. “Social media had contributed many good things to society … but we know there have been significant downsides to social media, and we did nothing to reduce or to mitigate those harms. And now we’re playing catch-up. I prefer not to play catch-up.”
The push comes as AI tools are quickly progressing. They read bedtime stories to children, sort drive-through orders at fast food locations and help make music videos. While some tech enthusiasts enthuse about AI’s potential benefits, others fear job losses and safety issues.
“It caught almost everybody by surprise, including many of the experts, in how rapidly (the tech is) progressing,” said Dan Hendrycks, director of the San Francisco-based nonprofit Center for AI Safety. “If we just delay and don’t do anything for several years, then we may be waiting until it’s too late.”
Wiener’s bill, SB1047, which is backed by the Center for AI Safety, calls for companies building large AI models to conduct safety testing and have the ability to turn off models that they directly control.
2024 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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California lawmakers are trying to regulate AI before it’s too late (2024, June 24)
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