The many benefits that the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) is offering in so many areas of our society is beginning to make many people raise their voices about how this technology should be used. Recently, a thousand experts have directly called for the development of artificial intelligence to be stopped, alerted by its advances, the most media-friendly figure of which is ChatGPT and GPT 4.
We can agree that it is the world's biggest software breakthrough in a decade and the tip of the iceberg of an increasingly likely technological revolution that is difficult to even define. These experts speak directly about stopping developments or we will be headed for the destruction of civilization. They are very radical, but at the speed at which everything is moving, who dares to deny it outright?
As always, technology runs at a speed much higher than the possible regulation that could frame it to define uses and excesses. With AI this gap is even more bloody. The boom of this technology has been exponential. Once again, governments and institutions show their inability to react and find barriers or limitations for the sector.
The open letter from global experts calls for a six-month halt to all developments, in a public and verifiable manner, to reflect on how, why and to what extent work on AI should be done. If not, directly, it should be done via government intervention.
Some have taken it to the letter, like Italy. Its data protection authority, the GPDP (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali), has banned the use of ChatGPT with immediate effect and blocked the OpenAI tool for alleged unlawful collection of personal data. It has also launched an investigation into the company. Italy has said that until it complies with the European GDPR, it will not lift the ban.
The issues raised by the Italian GPDP are essential. No information is provided to the user about the data collected and processed by Chat GPT, there is no adequate legal basis in relation to the collection of personal data and its processing intended to generate algorithms, there is no system for verifying the user's age...
With this precedent, others have begun to look into it, such as Spain, where the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) has also initiated an investigation ex officio for a possible breach of regulations. And the issue has already been raised to the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) to assess the global processing of data and the impact on people's rights. It is a first step. Let's see how fast it moves, though. Data privacy is just one aspect of the regulatory impacts of AI; the transparency and explainability of algorithms, ethics, fairness and non-discrimination, and the responsibility of AI systems will also have to be addressed.
