Assessing Benefits and Risks of AI: Italy Bans ChatGPT for Data Collection of Minors and Inaccurate Information
Italy has become the first Western country to ban ChatGPT, an AI language model developed by OpenAI, citing data collection of minors and provision of factually incorrect information to users. The Italian data protection authority, Garante, reported a data breach where the platform collected and processed users' personal data without a legal basis to train its algorithms.
OpenAI has been at the forefront of AI development, and the recent advancements in AI technology have brought nations around the world to start recognizing and planning for the near-future where AI influences our everyday lives. The rapidly evolving AI technology has made some users unable to properly utilize the features before new innovations make what they learned obsolete.
Although the United States has yet to propose formal legislation regulating AI, President Biden acknowledged the need to assess and control the risks of rapid-paced development. The European Union has already proposed legislation that would regulate the use and development of AI tech, with the European AI Act intending to heavily restrict the use of AI in education, law enforcement, and the judicial system.
The urgency for regulation comes from recent releases of ChatGPT4, which has raised concerns among top researchers, scientists, professors, and CEOs of multinational technology companies. The risks and unknown dangers of free-lancing AI also raise ethical considerations surrounding AI programs like ChatGPT.
The reliance on ChatGPT for conversation raises ethical concerns, as people begin to rely on a machine to have conversations, leading to a loss of genuine human connection. The ability to connect with others through conversation is a fundamental aspect of being human. Open-sourced projects online, like Auto-GPT, have made significant strides in AI development, but they may be more challenging to regulate since they are developed by freelance engineers worldwide.
