ChatGPT’s Sam Altman Faces US Senate Panel Examining Artificial Intelligence

Sam Altman, who is making his first appearance before Congress, is expected to support calls for regulatory guardrails on the technology so that potential harms such as misinformation or fraud don’t outweigh benefits.

“Long term, we will need our government and governments around the world to act and to put regulations in place and standards that make sure that we get as much of the good as possible from these technologies and minimize the downsides," Mr. Altman said in a recent interview on CNBC.

Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) and Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) said Tuesday’s session of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subpanel on technology issues will serve as a first step in understanding the new tools, reflecting the fact that lawmakers still lack consensus over how to respond to rapid consumer adoption of them.

“AI is hugely exciting in its potential promise for good but there’s also justifiable anxiety about the downsides," Mr. Blumenthal said in an interview before the hearing. “There needs to be some oversight and regulatory scrutiny before this technology so outpaces us that we lose all ability to protect against its potential evils."

Mr. Hawley added that “artificial intelligence will be transformative in ways we can’t even imagine, with implications for Americans’ elections, jobs and security."

The session with Mr. Altman is the latest in a series of meetings at the White House and on Capitol Hill following the launch late last year of ChatGPT, the consumer-facing chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT artificial-intelligence system, which rocketed to an estimated 100 million users within two months.

Just six months ago, Mr. Altman was an entrepreneur not well known outside Silicon Valley. His testimony Tuesday follows a recent White House sit-down with the CEOs of Google and Microsoft and Vice President Kamala Harris, who told the companies they have a responsibility to ensure their products are safe.

ChatGPT’s overnight success sparked an industry race that is putting the technology in the hands of billions of users.

Microsoft, an investor in OpenAI, has enabled ChatGPT in the Windows operating system. Google recently said its own so-called generative AI systems, including one called Bard, will be available in its apps.

The technology, which can instantly produce humanlike outputs of text, computer code, videos, music, and photos based on written prompts, promises to improve people’s productivity in a variety of tasks.

But it also threatens jobs, facilitates the spread of false information, and gives would-be criminals new tools for impersonation, hacking or other misdeeds.

In the view of some technologists, AI also portends a future where machine intelligence outstrips that of humans.

“The introduction of things like ChatGPT lit a fire under policy makers" to focus on artificial intelligence, Christina Montgomery, chief privacy and trust officer at IBM, said in a recent interview. She is set to testify Tuesday alongside Mr. Altman and a third witness, New York University professor emeritus Gary Marcus.

In her written testimony, Ms. Montgomery urged lawmakers to be precise in regulating specific uses of AI, rather than the technology itself. “A chatbot that can share restaurant recommendations or draft an email has different impacts on society than a system that supports decisions on credit, housing, or employment," she said.

So far, Washington’s new AI obsession has yielded lots of conversations but little in the way of concrete steps to pass legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) is leading discussions on a bipartisan bill that he says will maintain American leadership in innovation while ensuring AI is used responsibly and transparently. Mr. Schumer said earlier this month that he and his staff have met with close to 100 CEOs, academics and other experts, including a private chat with Elon Musk. But the Senate leader hasn’t released details on a legislative proposal.

“It is a work in progress," said Sen. Gary Peters (D., Mich.), chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, referring to the Schumer-led effort. “Regulations can be incredibly important, but they have to be smart. And that means we have to get a lot more information."

In the interim, the Biden administration has emphasized that a host of existing laws apply to artificial intelligence tools.