Ireland data regulator: We shouldn’t blindly ban AI-powered chatbots

While there’s no doubt that AI applications have seen a lot of progress in the public domain over the past few months following the integration of major language models like GPT, they’ve faced some hurdles from people wary of the technology’s potential negative effects. Seen too. . Germany and Italy are considering banning the use of ChatGPT in their own countries, an Australian mayor is considering a defamation lawsuit, and several influential figures have called to stop training on next-generation models. Application has been made to iLabs.

Despite some very clear opposing positions put forward by the aforementioned bodies, Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) Helen Dixon is actually against banning GPT and similar technologies. The data regulator has emphasized that:

It needs to be regulated and it’s about figuring out how to regulate it properly. For the Irish Data Protection Commission, where we are is trying to understand a little bit more about the technology, about the big language models, about where the training data comes from.

So I think it’s early days, but it’s time to have conversations that aren’t really going to stand up now instead of rushing into taboos.

While not in favor of a complete ban on creative AI technologies and applications, Dixon still believes that there are several concerns that need to be addressed in this domain. This includes data privacy, copyright, and defamation (especially if the AI ​​starts cheating).

Overall, Ireland’s approach shows more maturity when it comes to this domain. However, it remains to be seen how the country’s regulator will conduct these assessments of the benefits and risks of generative AI.

Source: Reuters | Photo by Sanket Mishra