US lawmakers become interested as ChatGPT’s popularity rises.

A rapidly expanding artificial intelligence programme called ChatGPT has received plaudits for its capacity to write responses quickly to a wide range of inquiries and has grabbed the attention of US politicians with concerns about its effects on national security and education.

The fastest-growing consumer application in history, ChatGPT was reported to have surpassed 100 million monthly active users just two months after introduction, making it a rising target for regulation.

It was developed by OpenAI, a business supported by Microsoft Corp., and made freely available to the general public. Because of its prevalence, there is concern that generative AI like ChatGPT could be used to spread misinformation, and teachers are concerned that students would use it to cheat.

Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat on the House of Representatives Science Committee, expressed in a recent opinion piece in the New York Times that he was both “freaked out by A.I., specifically A.I. that is left unchecked and unregulated,” as well as excited about AI and the “incredible ways it will continue to advance society.”

Congress should focus on AI, according to a resolution introduced by Lieu that was written by ChatGPT. It stated that this is necessary “to ensure that the development and deployment of AI is done in a way that is safe, ethical, and respects the rights and privacy of all Americans, and that the benefits of AI are widely distributed and the risks are minimised.”

In January, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman went to Capitol Hill where he met with tech-oriented lawmakers such as Senators Mark Warner, Ron Wyden and Richard Blumenthal and Representative Jake Auchincloss, according to aides to the Democratic lawmakers.

An aide to Wyden said the lawmaker pressed Altman on the need to make sure AI did not include biases that would lead to discrimination in the real world, like housing or jobs.

“While Senator Wyden believes AI has tremendous potential to speed up innovation and research, he is laser-focused on ensuring automated systems don’t automate discrimination in the process,” said Keith Chu, an aide to Wyden.

A second congressional aide described the discussions as focusing on the speed of changes in AI and how it could be used.

Prompted by worries about plagiarism, ChatGPT has already been banned in schools in New York and Seattle, according to media reports. One congressional aide said the concern they were hearing from constituents came mainly from educators focused on cheating.

“We don’t want ChatGPT to be used for misleading purposes in schools or anywhere else, so we’re already building mitigations to enable anyone detect text created by that system,” stated OpenAI in a statement.

OpenAI’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati, stated in a Time interview that the business welcomed feedback from all sources, including authorities and governments. “Regulators should still get engaged,” she argued.

National security issues were brought up by Andrew Burt, managing partner of BNH.AI, a law firm specialising in AI liability. He added that he had conversations with lawmakers considering whether to regulate ChatGPT and other similar AI systems like Google’s Bard, though he was unable to reveal their names.

“The whole value proposition of these types of AI systems is that they can generate content at scales and speeds that humans simply can’t,” he said.

“I would expect malicious actors, non-state actors and state actors that have interests that are adversarial to the United States to be using these systems to generate information that could be wrong or could be harmful.”

ChatGPT itself, when asked how it should be regulated, demurred and said: “As a neutral AI language model, I don’t have a stance on specific laws that may or may not be enacted to regulate AI systems like me.” But it then went on to list potential areas of focus for regulators, such as data privacy, bias and fairness, and transparency in how answers are written.