Minister ‘disappointed’ in OpenAI, but why is AI regulation taking years?
Global News
Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon said he is giving OpenAI a chance to quickly detail 'concrete' actions before the government addresses the issue through legislation.
Federal ministers who met with representatives of OpenAI expressed disappointment Wednesday that the company did not present steps it will take to improve its safety measures — including when police are warned of a user’s online behaviour.
Experts in the field, however, are questioning why the federal government has been slow to regulate artificial intelligence before concerns were raised this month following the Tumbler Ridge, B.C., mass shooting.
Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon said he is giving the company a chance to update him in the coming days on “concrete” actions before he and other ministers address the issue through legislation, though he noted a series of bills addressing AI safety and privacy are in the works.
“Look, we told this company we want to see some hard proposals, some concrete action,” Solomon told reporters in Ottawa while heading into a Liberal caucus meeting.
“We’re disappointed that by the time they came here, they did not have something more concrete to offer, but we’ll see very shortly what they have,” he added, noting that “all options” were on the table for how the government might act.
Solomon summoned representatives of the company behind ChatGPT to Ottawa after it emerged that the shooter who killed eight people in Tumbler Ridge on Feb. 10 was flagged internally last June for her activity on the AI chatbot.
OpenAI did not alert the RCMP until after the mass shooting occurred, saying the “violent” activity did not meet the internal threshold of an “imminent” threat when the account was flagged and banned over seven months prior.
Justice Minister Sean Fraser, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree and Culture and Identity Minister Marc Miller — whose ministry is working on new online harms legislation — were also present at the meeting.
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