5 days ago
OpenAI says that it wants to learn from these experiments, and use them as the basis for a more global, and more ambitious process in future.
OpenAI, maker of popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, has announced the launch of a program to award ten $100,000 grants to fund experiments in setting up a democratic process for deciding what rules AI systems should follow, within the bounds defined by the law.
The company says that it wants to learn from these experiments, and use them as the basis for a more global, and more ambitious process in future. It hopes that these initial experiments could help explore decision relevant questions and build novel democratic tools that can more directly inform AI govenance-related decisions in the future.
As AI technology continues to evolve and permeate various aspects of society, questions surrounding ethical frameworks and the decision-making processes of AI systems have gained prominence.
OpenAI co- founders Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, in a joint blog post recently talked about the potential risk that we have from the fast-paced evolution of AI.
The trio believes that it could be “unintuitively risky and difficult” to stop the creation of superintelligence. Due to the significant benefits associated with the development of the technology, its construction costs have been decreasing each year and there has been a rapid increase in the number of its makers. They believe that preventing its advancement would require the establishment of a global surveillance regime, which itself is not guaranteed to be effective.
OpenAI is seeking teams from across the world to develop proof-of-concepts for a democratic process that could answer questions about what rules AI systems should follow.
“While these initial experiments are not (at least for now) intended to be binding for decisions, we hope that they explore decision relevant questions and build novel democratic tools that can more directly inform decisions in the future,” says the company.
Under the newly launched program, OpenAI wants applicants to come up with unique approaches and envision how AI could improve the democratic processes of governing AI development.
“The governance of the most powerful systems, as well as decisions regarding their deployment, must have strong public oversight. This grant represents a step to establish democratic processes for overseeing AGI and, ultimately, superintelligence. It will be provided by the OpenAI non-profit organisation, and the results of the studies will be freely accessible.”
People can apply for program now and the deadline is June 24 at 9 pm PDT. Once the application period ends, OpenAI plans to select ten successful grant recipients. These can be individuals, teams or organisations.
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Each recipient will receive a $100,000 grant to work on the proposal suggested by them in their application materials. Grant recipients are expected to implement a proof-of-concept engaging at least 500 participants and will be required to publish a public report on their findings by October 20, 2023.
