US, UK governments make weak plea to AI companies: 'The private sector has an ethical, moral, and legal responsibility'

pcgamer.com:

Both the UK and US government have begun to circle warily around the recent emergence of powerful AI technologies, and are taking the first steps towards attempting to rein in the sector. The British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), fresh from pulling the rug out from under Microsoft's proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition, has begun a review of the underlying systems behind various AI tools. The U.S. government joined in by issuing a statement saying AI companies have a «fundamental responsibility to make sure their products are safe before they are deployed or made public.»

This all comes shortly after Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, sometimes called «the Godfather of deep learning», resigned from Google(opens in new tab) and warned that the industry needs to stop scaling AI technology and ask «whether they can control it.» Google is one of many seriously big tech companies, including Microsoft and OpenAI, that have invested enormously in AI technologies, and that investment may well be part of the problem: Such companies eventually want to see where the returns are coming from.

Dr. Hinton's resignation comes amid wider fears about the sector. Last month saw a joint letter with 30,000 signatories, including prominent tech figures like Elon Musk, warning about the effect of AI on areas like jobs, the potential for fraud, and of course good old misinformation. The UK government’s scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, has entreated the government to «get ahead» of these issues, and compared the emergence of the tech to the Industrial Revolution.

«AI has burst into the public consciousness over the past few months but has been on our radar for some time,» the CMA's chief executive Sarah Cardell told the Guardian(opens