In recent hours, ChatGPT and its creator, OpenAI, have once again made headlines. The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) announced through a statement the official investigation it is launching into the most popular artificial intelligence tool in recent months.
Spain will not be the first country to initiate such an action. In fact, some others have gone even further. This was the case of Italy, which directly banned the use of the tool in the country and ordered its blocking due to alleged unlawful collection of personal data. This was the starting signal for other European countries to follow Italy’s lead and demand greater control measures over ChatGPT.
At the beginning of April, the AEPD already requested the European Data Protection Board to study this conversational AI chat, considering that it could have a significant impact on people’s rights. Since then, two weeks have passed, and just yesterday (Thursday, April 13), the European body approved the creation of a task force to cooperate and share information about other actions implemented by different local data protection authorities.
The Agency also announced yesterday that, along with the start of the investigation in our country at the European level, it will also open an investigation into ChatGPT as a local authority to assess the violation of people’s rights to the protection of their personal data.
“And why all this?” you might ask. There are several arguments. Some focus more on the way the artificial intelligence tool collects that huge amount of personal data with which it trains and learns. By not clearly informing how that data was collected, it seems that the way it reaches the chat might not be entirely legal.
Other arguments align with the unauthorized use of excerpts from works owned by others that the platform uses when generating text. Surely each expert addressing the issue has a new nuance to add to all these theories, and that is why, due to the plurality of voices raising alarms about ChatGPT, local European authorities and others around the world are deploying their control measures.
The reality shows that the development of Artificial Intelligence is moving faster than legislation, so there is still much work to be done to make these tools more easily auditable and fully compliant with current laws. Let’s remember that ChatGPT reached 100 million users in its first two months of existence.
Leading voices in technology united against the unstoppable advance of AI
“We ask all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” This is the request made by the signatories of the open letter published at the end of March. Among the main figures in the technology world, this letter was signed by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), and Jaan Tallinn (co-founder of Skype). In this way, more than 1,000 important voices in the tech world publicly expressed their concerns about the rapid advances of AI systems. They referred more specifically to those that represented an advance over the latest released version of GPT-4 (in practice, it is the same as the ChatGPT you have all heard about, but with a higher accuracy rate in responses or somewhat more developed).
But not all is doom and gloom for AI. This letter also makes clear that the development of AI systems can represent a very profound change in history. But it also sets the condition that it must be managed and planned properly.
Of course, the development of such advanced technologies as AI is here to make our lives easier, but always doing so with respect for people’s rights, using authorized data and information, and being truthful. In recent weeks, we have seen fake images created by AI showing Pope Francis wearing a Balenciaga coat or Trump resisting the police.
This type of image reflects the most immoral side of these tools, the one that deceives and generates fake news.
AI is much more than ChatGPT and comes in different types. Technology companies have been using this kind of technology for many years for everyday uses such as unlocking a mobile device just by looking at it. In the future, it is expected that the combination of different technologies will give rise to personal use projects that help us, with a very advanced AI known as Reinforcement Learning, to control the temperature of our homes and offices so that houses and businesses become fully autonomous spaces in regulating temperature and comfort more economically and environmentally friendly.
The positive side of AI is also there; you just have to know how to use it.
