AI should be regulated like medicine and nuclear energy: UK minister

Developers working on artificial intelligence should be licensed and regulated in the same way as the pharmaceutical, medical or nuclear industries, according to a representative of Britain’s opposition political party.

Lucy Powell, a politician and digital spokeswoman for the United Kingdom’s Labor Party, told The Guardian on 5 June that firms such as OpenAI or Google that build AI models “should have a license to build these models,” adding:

“My real concern is the lack of any regulation of large language models that can be applied across a range of AI tools, whether it is how they are built, how they are managed or how they are controlled. Is.”

Powell argued that regulating the development of certain technologies is a better option than banning them the way the European Union has banned facial recognition devices.

He said AI “could have a lot of unintended consequences” but that some of the risks could be mitigated by the government if developers were forced to be open about their AI training models and datasets.

“This technology is advancing so rapidly that it requires a proactive, interventionist government approach rather than laissez-faire,” she said.

Ahead of speaking at the TechUK conference tomorrow, I spoke to the Guardian about Labor’s approach to digital technology and AI https://t.co/qzypKE5uJU

– Lucy Powell MP (@LucyMPowell) June 5, 2023

Powell also believes that such advanced technology can greatly affect the UK economy and the Labor Party is reportedly working out its policies on AI and related technologies.

Next week, Labor leader Keir Starmer plans to meet with the party’s shadow cabinet at Google’s UK offices to talk to its AI-focused executives.

Connected: EU officials want all AI-generated content to be labeled

Meanwhile, Matt Clifford, chairman of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency – the government’s research agency established last February – warned on Talk TV on June 5 that Thai could threaten humans in as little as two years.

EXCLUSIVE: Matt Clifford, an advisor to the PM’s AI task force, says the world has only two years left to tame artificial intelligence before computers become too powerful for humans to control.

— TalkTV (@TalkTV) June 5, 2023

“If we don’t start thinking about how to regulate and think about security, in two years’ time we’ll find that we have systems that are really, really powerful,” he said. However, Clifford clarified that the two-year time frame is “the faster end of the spectrum”.

Clifford highlighted that AI tools today can be used to help “launch large-scale cyberattacks”. OpenAI has put forward $1 million to support AI-aided cyber security technology to thwart such uses.

“I think there are a lot of different scenarios to worry about,” he said. “I certainly think it’s right that it should be very high on the agenda for policy makers.”

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