As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the new buzzword with Microsoft’s (MSFT) / OpenAI ChatGPT amassing an estimated 100 million users, it has also left regulators and governments around the world spooked and worried by the power it could wield. This has resulted in many countries including Russia, China, and Italy banning ChatGPT. In addition, the AI race is already heating up with other tech players including Alphabet (GOOGL) and Baidu (BIDU) also venturing into AI with their own chatbots.
Earlier this year, even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce called for regulation of AI. Now, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman has also called for “regulatory intervention” to “mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models” in his testimony before Congress. Altman explained, “As this technology advances, we understand that people are anxious that it could change the way we live. We are too, but we believe that we can and must work together to manage the potential downsides, so that we can all enjoy the tremendous upsides.”
Indeed, according to a recent Reuters and Ipsos poll, 61% of respondents seem to believe that AI poses a risk to humanity and while 22% of respondents disagreed with this notion, 17% remained unsure about AI.
At the Congress session on Capitol Hill, Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella also responded to Elon Musk’s allegation that Microsoft “has a very strong say, if not directly controls, OpenAI at this point.”
Nadella responded, “OpenAI is very grounded in their mission of being controlled by a nonprofit board..[and while] we have a noncontrolling interest in the OpenAI… we have a great commercial partnership in it.”
The AI race and the interest in tech stocks has seen the iShares U.S. Technology ETF (IYW) gain more than 25% year-to-date.
