1. What you'll lose1/5

   Smaller rivals, licensed out, critics argued.

2. Condescension1/5

   Polite, to a friendly committee.

3. Tone-deafness2/5

   Asking to be regulated by the agency he designs.

4. Doom2/5

   His worst fear: 'significant harm to the world'.

5. Hypocrisy3/5

   Two years later he told the Senate prior approval 'would be disastrous'.

Full time9 pitchforksof a possible 25

The occasion

US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, hearing on oversight of AI, 16 May 2023.

Context

Invited by Sen. John Kennedy to say what he would do if he were in charge of regulating AI, Altman proposed a new licensing agency for AI efforts above a certain scale. The hearing was friendly to him; in it he also said his worst fear is that the field and the industry cause significant harm to the world. Critics afterwards argued that a licensing regime would favour incumbents such as OpenAI.

Crowd reaction

Critical commentary

Fox Business reported that Altman 'received pushback' after asking Congress for steep regulations: critics on social media warned that licensing would favour deep pockets and early AI innovators like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft, resulting in regulatory capture, and one commentator tweeted 'another stupid occupational license just dropped'. Slate's Timothy B. Lee wrote that a licensing regime could 'cement the dominance of industry incumbents like Google and OpenAI' and that Altman had not explained how it would work.

See the reaction

• Primary source, transcript
• Tech Policy Press: Transcript: Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing on Oversight of AI
• Slate: Is It Too Late to Regulate A.I., or Too Soon?
• Fox Business: Should AI development require a license? ChatGPT’s creator thinks so, but some experts disagree
• Where the exact words are printed