Artificial intelligence (AI) would be dangerous in the hands of unscrupulous people, Microsoft Corp chief economist Michael Schwarz said yesterday.
“I am confident AI will be used by bad actors, and yes, it will cause real damage,” Schwarz said during a World Economic Forum panel in Geneva, Swizerland. “It can do a lot damage in the hands of spammers with elections and so on.”
AI “clearly” must be regulated, but lawmakers should be cautious and wait until the technology causes “real harm,” he said.
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AI tools have come under increased scrutiny as their use exploded in recent months following the debut of ChatGPT. Policymakers are trying to pressure companies to implement safeguards around the emerging technology.
“Once we see real harm, we have to ask ourselves the simple question: ‘Can we regulate that in a way where the good things that will be prevented by this regulation are less important?’” Schwarz said. “The principles should be: The benefits from the regulation to our society should be greater than the cost to our society.”
US Vice President Kamala Harris is today scheduled to meet with the Microsoft, Alphabet Inc and OpenAI Inc CEOs as part of US President Joe Biden administration’s effort to pressure companies to implement safeguards around the emerging technology.
Harris and administration officials plan to tell the corporate leaders that they have a responsibility to mitigate potential harm from AI tools, a White House official said.
Last week, G7 digital ministers said that member nations should adopt “risk-based” regulation of AI, while EU lawmakers reached a preliminary agreement on the Artificial Intelligence Act, which would regulate the emerging technology.
Microsoft is working on guardrails to mitigate the potential danger from AI tools, Schwarz said.
The company is already using OpenAI’s ChatGPT in its Bing search product, and Google released its rival Bard chatbot in March.
Schwarz said that policymakers should be careful not to directly regulate AI training sets.
“That would be pretty disastrous,” he said. “If [the US] Congress were to make those decisions about training sets, good luck to us.”
Despite the risks, AI can help humans, Schwarz said.
“We, as mankind, ought to be better off because we can produce more stuff with less work,” he said.
AI would revolutionize the way most businesses operate, he said, adding that it would take time.
“I like to say AI changes nothing in the short run and it changes everything in the long run,” Schwarz said. “That is true for every single technology that came before.”
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