Artificial intelligence (AI) would be dangerous in the hands of unscrupulous people, Microsoft Corp chief economist Michael Schwarz said yesterday.
“I am confident AI will be used by bad actors, and yes, it will cause real damage,” Schwarz said during a World Economic Forum panel in Geneva, Swizerland. “It can do a lot damage in the hands of spammers with elections and so on.”
AI “clearly” must be regulated, but lawmakers should be cautious and wait until the technology causes “real harm,” he said.
Photo: AFP
AI tools have come under increased scrutiny as their use exploded in recent months following the debut of ChatGPT. Policymakers are trying to pressure companies to implement safeguards around the emerging technology.
“Once we see real harm, we have to ask ourselves the simple question: ‘Can we regulate that in a way where the good things that will be prevented by this regulation are less important?’” Schwarz said. “The principles should be: The benefits from the regulation to our society should be greater than the cost to our society.”
US Vice President Kamala Harris is today scheduled to meet with the Microsoft, Alphabet Inc and OpenAI Inc CEOs as part of US President Joe Biden administration’s effort to pressure companies to implement safeguards around the emerging technology.
Harris and administration officials plan to tell the corporate leaders that they have a responsibility to mitigate potential harm from AI tools, a White House official said.
Last week, G7 digital ministers said that member nations should adopt “risk-based” regulation of AI, while EU lawmakers reached a preliminary agreement on the Artificial Intelligence Act, which would regulate the emerging technology.
Microsoft is working on guardrails to mitigate the potential danger from AI tools, Schwarz said.
The company is already using OpenAI’s ChatGPT in its Bing search product, and Google released its rival Bard chatbot in March.
Schwarz said that policymakers should be careful not to directly regulate AI training sets.
“That would be pretty disastrous,” he said. “If [the US] Congress were to make those decisions about training sets, good luck to us.”
Despite the risks, AI can help humans, Schwarz said.
“We, as mankind, ought to be better off because we can produce more stuff with less work,” he said.
AI would revolutionize the way most businesses operate, he said, adding that it would take time.
“I like to say AI changes nothing in the short run and it changes everything in the long run,” Schwarz said. “That is true for every single technology that came before.”
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
‘SACRED MOUNTAIN’: The chipmaker can form joint ventures abroad, except in China, but like other firms, it needs government approval for large investments Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) needs government permission for any overseas joint ventures (JVs), but there are no restrictions on making the most advanced chips overseas other than for China, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. US media have said that TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and a major supplier to companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp, has been in talks for a stake in Intel Corp. Neither company has confirmed the talks, but US President Donald Trump has accused Taiwan of taking away the US’ semiconductor business and said he wants the industry back
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
RSS