Days after ChatGPT-maker OpenAI’s chief executive officer suggested an international authority to regulate advanced artificial intelligence (AI) development, a top Indian minister indicated that the government might have a different view on the matter.
Altman is scheduled to visit India in June and may end up meeting top government officials as he is doing in other countries, amid a whirlwind world tour.
“Sam Altman is obviously a smart man. He has his own ideas about how AI should be regulated. We certainly think we have some smart brains in India as well and we have our own views on how AI should have guardrails,” said Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar.
“If there is eventually a United Nations of AI – as Sam Altman wants – more power to it. But that does not stop us from doing what is right for our digital nagriks (citizens) and keeping the internet safe and trusted,” he added.
The minister highlighted that the government is looking to regulate AI through the prism of user harm, and the forthcoming Digital India Bill draft will deal with it.
“Consultation has already started… In the Digital India Act, a whole chapter is going to be devoted to emerging technologies which is not about AI only, but multiple other technologies as well... On how we would regulate them through the prism of user harm,” he said.
OpenAI’s Altman recently wrote a blog which suggested an inter-governmental agency like the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) to put a check on the unfettered development of advanced AI.
"Second, we are likely to eventually need something like an IAEA for superintelligence efforts; any effort above a certain capability (or resources like compute) threshold will need to be subject to an international authority that can inspect systems, require audits, test for compliance with safety standards, place restrictions on degrees of deployment and levels of security, etc,” he wrote in the blog.
"Tracking compute and energy usage could go a long way, and give us some hope this idea could actually be implementable. As a first step, companies could voluntarily agree to begin implementing elements of what such an agency might one day require, and as a second, individual countries could implement it," he added.
