The $100,000 grants will go to recipients who present
compelling frameworks for answering such questions as whether AI ought to
criticize public figures and what it should consider the “median individual” in
the world, according to a blog post announcing the fund.
Critics say AI systems like ChatGPT have an inherent bias
due to the inputs used to shape their views. Users have found examples of
racist or sexist outputs from AI software. Concerns are growing that AI working
alongside search engines like Alphabet's Google and Microsoft's Bing may
produce incorrect information in a convincing fashion.
OpenAI, backed by $10 billion from Microsoft, has been
leading the call for regulation of AI. Yet it recently threatened to pull out
of the European Union over proposed rules.
"The current draft of the EU AI Act would be
over-regulating, but we have heard it's going to get pulled back,"
OpenAI's chief executive Sam Altman told Reuters. "They are still talking
about it."
The startup's grants would not fund that much AI research. Salaries
for AI engineers and others in the red-hot sector easily top $100,000 and can
exceed $300,000.
AI systems “should benefit all of humanity and be shaped to
be as inclusive as possible," OpenAI said in the blog post. "We are
launching this grant program to take a first step in this direction."
The San Francisco startup said results of the funding could
shape its own views on AI governance, though it said no recommendations would
be "binding."
Altman has been a leading figure calling for regulation of
AI, while simultaneously rolling out new updates to ChatGPT and image-generator
DALL-E. This month he appeared before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, saying “if
this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong.”
Microsoft too has recently endorsed comprehensive regulation
of AI even as it has vowed to insert the technology into its products, racing
with OpenAI, Google and startups to offer AI to consumers and businesses.
Nearly every sector has an interest in AI's potential to
improve efficiency and cut labor costs, along with concerns AI could spread
misinformation or factual inaccuracies, what industry insiders call
“hallucinations.”
AI is already behind several widely believed spoofs. One
recent phony viral image of an explosion near the Pentagon briefly affected the
stock market.
Despite calls for greater regulation, Congress has failed to
pass new legislation to meaningfully curtail Big Tech. © Reuters
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