According to Microsoft president Brad Smith, artificial intelligence (AI) could be the “most significant” technological change of our lifetime, and governments must now learn how to manage it.
Speaking at a panel discussion in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Smith said “government needs to move faster” to stay abreast of developments in AI.
And while Smith urged governments to step up, he also said the private sector has a role to play in controlling the development of AI.
As part of the role of the private sector, Smith announced Microsoft’s “5-point AI governance plan,” noting on Twitter that the firm’s goal is to bring the public and private sectors together so that AI “serves all of society.”
Meanwhile, in comments provided by the New York Times, Smith suggested that the government should require companies working on advanced AI models to obtain a license.
“That means you notify the government when you start testing,” Smith said, adding that the results of ongoing operations must also be shared with the government:
“You have to share the results with the government. Even if it has been licensed for deployment, you have an obligation to continue to monitor it and notify the government if unexpected problems arise.”
Still, Smith acknowledged that he and Microsoft, one of the owners of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, don’t necessarily know what the government’s previous actions have been.
“We don’t necessarily have the best information or the best answer, or we may not be the most reliable speaker. But, you know, right now, especially in Washington, D.C., people are looking for ideas,” he said.
According to some assessments Microsoft spent about $13 billion to support OpenAI and integrate ChatGPT into its Bing search engine.
The Microsoft president’s comments come after more than 1,100 industry insiders signed an open letter in March letter asking governments to “stop giant AI experiments.”
“Competitive intelligence artificial intelligence systems may pose serious risks to society and humanity,” the experts wrote in the letter, while urging “all artificial intelligence laboratories to immediately suspend for at least 6 months the training of artificial intelligence systems more powerful than GPT-4.”
