Weekly Updates

AI Regulation, backstage squabbles, and fear-mongering executives

These days the technology design and policy scene has been dominated by discussions about AI and generative AI regulation. So today, we will take a look at how we got here, what approaches are on the table, what are the competing forces in this debate, and what a technology-neutral approach would really mean.

The altruistic beginning

In the beginning, there was an idea: to create a research lab focused on advancing knowledge about AI that could be shielded from the big tech companies’ agenda. That's what brought together Tesla's Elon Musk, Y Combinator's Sam Altman, and ex-Stripe Brockman. In particular, they saw an opportunity to bring together the greatest minds in AI under the mission to make sure Google, Microsoft, and Facebook weren't the only ones capable of competing in a futuristic AI-driven world.

To make that vision come true, OpenAI was born as a non-profit organization and received “altruistic” donations from some of the greatest names in the technology industry (outside of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, of course). From an interview with Sam Altman and Elon Musk in 2015:

“Essentially, OpenAI is a research lab meant to counteract large corporations who may gain too much power by owning super-intelligence systems devoted to profits, as well as governments which may use AI to gain power and even oppress their citizenry.”

It's also worth reading an excerpt from the OpenAI announcement on their website (the page was removed but can still be accessed via the WayBackMachine):

“OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. Since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact”.

Since the beginning, there have been speculations about the reasons behind Musk's participation. From the Wired (2016):

“[T]hey all shared a goal: to create a new kind of AI lab, one that would operate outside the control not only of Google, but of anyone else. "The best thing that I could imagine doing," Brockman says, "was moving humanity closer to building real AI in a safe way." Musk was there because he's an old friend of Altman's ---and because AI is crucial to the future of his various businesses and, well, the future as a whole. Tesla needs AI for its inevitable self-driving cars. SpaceX, Musk's other company, will need it to put people in space and keep them alive once they're there. But Musk is also one of the loudest voices warning that we humans could one day lose control of systems powerful enough to learn on their own.”

Elon Musk himself said in a 2015 interview:

“As you know, I've had some concerns about AI for some time. And I've had many conversations with Sam and with Reid [Hoffman], Peter Thiel, and others. And we were just thinking, “Is there some way to insure, or increase, the probability that AI would develop in a beneficial way?” And as a result of a number of conversations, we came to the conclusion that having a 501c3, a non-profit, with no obligation to maximize profitability, would probably be a good thing to do. And also we're going to be very focused on safety”.

In any case, the assignment was very publicly to advance the future of AI away from the pressures from the industry. From the Wired (2016):

"Brockman, Altman, and Musk aim to push the notion of openness further still, saying they don't want one or two large corporations controlling the future of artificial intelligence.”

The Microsoft move

Three years in, with massive costs and no revenue on their sheets, things begin to change. After poaching one of the top OpenAI researchers to lead Tesla's Autopilot project in June 2017, Musk left OpenAI in February 2018, alleging potential conflicts of interest due to Tesla's plans to develop its AI program. However, Sam Altman claimed Musk was frustrated with the pace of innovation at OpenAI compared to Google's and tried to take over the project but was rejected by the board.

Finally, in February 2019, OpenAI had a big breakthrough with GPT-2, and things started moving much faster. Along with the announcement of GPT-2, OpenAI declared it would not make the software widely available for security concerns regarding misuse. They did, however, launch a proof-of-concept website where people could chat with their bot.

In the very next month, in March 2019, Sam Altman stepped down from YCombinator and became CEO of OpenAI with the purpose of “[b]uilding what he is calling a ”capped-profit” company that could be a model in Silicon Valley — where firms struggle to determine whether they have any responsibilities to the world beyond making money for their shareholders”.

That's when OpenAI shifts to a for-profit structure, alleging concerns about talent attraction and retention and a willingness to attract venture capital funding. Only four months later, in July 2019, Microsoft announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI, in which the company would invest USD 1 billion.

In May 2020, OpenAI announced GPT-3 and subsequently disclosed an exclusive licensing deal with Microsoft. According to MIT Tech Review:

"The companies say OpenAI will continue to offer its public-facing API, which allows chosen users to send text to GPT-3 or OpenAI's other models and receive its output. Only Microsoft, however, will have access to GPT -3's underlying code, allowing it to embed, repurpose, and modify the model as it pleases”.

Over two years later, in November 2022, OpenAI announced ChatGPT, the ultimate interface to send text prompts and receive outputs.

Two months later, in January 2023, Microsoft announced a USD 10 billion investment in OpenAI, apparently at a USD 21 billion pre-money valuation.

In March 2023, Elon Musk returned to the scene by leading a plea for a halt in AI development, leveraging the collective imaginary of a Terminator-like future, and fueling fear-mongering narratives the media and public opinion grew so addicted to.

At the same time, also in March 2023, Musk started voicing his disagreements with OpenAI. From TechCrunch:

"I'm still confused as to how a non-profit to which I donated ~$100M somehow became a $30B market cap for-profit. If this is legal, why doesn't everyone do it?” he tweeted in mid-March. A week later he complained on Twitter again: “I donated the first $100M to OpenAI when it was a non-profit, but have no ownership or control.”

A few weeks later, in April 2023, OpenAI concludes a relatively small venture capital investment round, bringing the biggest firms in Silicon Valley but raising relatively little: USD 300 million at a USD 27.7 million pre-money valuation.

That backstory gives us two important pieces of the puzzle to understand the competing forces at play in the AI regulation conversations.

The first is about OpenAI. They started as a non-profit research led by Stripe's ex-CTO project. However, the game has changed completely since YCombinator's CEO Sam Altman took the OpenAI CEO role and sold USD 11 billion worth of shares to Microsoft.

The second is about Elon Musk. Musk has always been vocal about his concerns around artificial intelligence. However, he has funded the AI research and was on its board for years until he left — not because he didn't think AI should advance but to build his version at Tesla. It wasn't until Microsoft's alleged takeover that Musk started to say AI advancement should pause.

Regulatory push: understanding the competing forces

After the massive surge in popularity of ChatGPT, and as people kept arguing AI would be either the redemption or damnation of humanity, regulators joined the conversation. In the US, congressional hearings took place, and Sam Altman went on a world tour to talk to regulators.

The discussion around regulation is of the utmost relevance since it could set the tone for technology development for years to come. And although the regulator's initial plan was to go with a technology-neutral, risk-based set of rules, fear-mongering and other self-interested narratives have successfully changed the negotiations.

From Bloomberg:

“The EU's AI Act is on track to be the first comprehensive legislation to address artificial intelligence. While the original proposal focused on regulating its use rather than the technology itself, the European Parliament proposed new rules that specifically target large language models after the explosion in popularity in generative AI”.

From the Washington Post, on the EU AI Act, recently approved by the European Parlament:

It would introduce new limits on technologies simply deemed “high risk,” such as tools that could sway voters to influence elections or recommendation algorithms, which suggest what posts, photos and videos people see on social networks.

From the Emerging Tech Brew:

“Senators on both sides of the aisle generally agreed on the need for regulation, as did all of the witnesses, Gavoor pointed out. “You just don't often see that in Washington,” he added”.

This is not by chance. The AIpocalypse narrative is useful for those like Elon Musk, who was left behind in the AI development process. And they are not alone. The more structured push to regulate AI also benefits OpenAI and Microsoft themselves. It's the typical “kicking the ladder” strategy. More regulation elevates entry barriers in a market and tends to shield big-pocket, consolidated players, like the combo OpenAI-Microsoft. That is, of course, precisely the kind of world OpenAI was created to avoid: one in which only a few private companies could hold the future of AI.

Others, like IBM, are going for a delimitation strategy, in which naming several situations where AI could be regulated without much damage for the company can, by contrast, shield applications the tech giant could be targeting in the future. From the Emerging Tech Brew:

“Altman, along with IBM's Christina Montgomery, made suggestions for how Congress should take action, with Altman proposing “licensing and testing requirements” and Montgomery suggesting “precision regulation” of specific use cases.

Microsoft President Brad Smith also threw the company's support behind the creation of a new government agency and licensing system for pre-trained AI models at an event in Washington, DC, last week that laid out Microsoft's blueprint for AI in a white paper”.

Although some are still voicing the risk-based approach solution for regulation, like Salesforce CEO Clara Shih, the statements from the most vocal companies in this debate beg the question: “Who speaks for startups and for a non-monopolistic future?”.

A glimpse into a technology-neutral AI regulation

CTPI is grounded on a firm belief that technology regulation should rarely be focused on the technology itself, but instead on the underlying human activity the new tools are enhancing. We call this a technology-neutral regulation. That means using ChatGPT to cheat in school is bad not because of AI but because cheating is forbidden. In this context of education, from Markkula Center for Applied Ethics’ Susan Kennedy:

“Surprisingly, the panic over ChatGPT doesn't actually seem to be about ChatGPT. It's not all that **impressive, nor is it significantly more effective than the ‘old ways’ of cheating. Instead, the panic seems to be fueled by the expectation that students won't be able to resist the temptation to use it and that cheating will become rampant. The release of ChatGPT is forcing educators to confront a much deeper issue that has been taking shape for quite some time; students who are becoming increasingly obsessed with grades, GPAs, and completing a degree, and who are willing to go to great, and sometimes unethical, lengths to achieve these things”.

A technology-neutral approach focuses on the accountability of whoever uses the tool for whatever they are using it for. According to this general logic, using copyrighted material to train AI models shouldn't be a more significant issue than using such tool to replicate a specific artist's style. In the arts, see Maya Ackerman from Markkula Center for Applied Ethics:

"It's important to remember that generative AI has had decades of development within academia. In my experience as a generative AI researcher, I've never seen creative machines in the academic context that focus on imitating the style of a living artist, unless the system was created by that artist. Instead, we have general purpose systems that can create anything from poetry, music, pottery, stories, dance choreography and more. Many academics have even experimented with the idea of AI developing their own unique styles to push the creative abilities of their machines. (…)

The true power of generative AI lies in its ability to elevate human creativity, rather than replace it. In fact, instead of encouraging imitation of other human artists, AI can help creatives find their own unique voice. (…)This is not simply about speed and efficiency, but about opening up a realm of creative possibilities and offering a new type of creative process where inspiration is always abundant.”

Finally, regarding decision-making, as mentioned in a previous issue of CTPI Weekly, individuals and companies should always be held accountable for whatever they say and decide, irrespective of being mediated by artificial intelligence.

Our effort in this discussion must be to strip away our science fiction-based, commercial interests-fulled panic of the technology itself and focus on how to tackle the underlying human actions that effectively afford regulation.