Our open letter to Open AI’s CEO Sam Altman

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* OpenAI recently launched the latest version of ChatGPT. The platform and other such tools hold a lot of promise and we recognise efforts have been made to edit out discrimination.
* The Alliance for Universal Digital Rights (AUDRi) ([link removed]) agrees with OpenAI’s view that “this technology comes with real dangers as it reshapes society” and “at some point it will be quite easy, if one wanted, to cause a great deal of harm with these models".
* We support OpenAI's call for regulators and society to be involved in building solutions which mitigate potential negative consequences.
* AUDRi ([link removed]) has written to OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, inviting him to discuss how we might work together to wrap the appropriate governance around ChatGPT in the context of the consultation on the UN’s Global Digital Compact.

Dear John,

OpenAI’s increasingly popular artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT-4 has impressive capabilities and the potential to benefit and reshape societies. But it also poses huge dangers, including with how it replicates and reinforces biased and discriminatory stereotypes. This week the Alliance for Universal Digital Rights ([link removed]) (AUDRi) – founded by Equality Now and Women Leading in AI ([link removed]) – have written an open letter ([link removed]) to OpenAI’s Chief Executive Officer, Sam Altman, inviting him to collaborate on tackling risks and governance issues accompanying ChatGPT.
Read our open letter ([link removed])

We’re concerned that right now, ChatGPT-4 propagates gender discrimination

ChatGPT uses deep learning to produce human-like text, and its algorithm has been trained using massive amounts of text-based data.

Altman and his team should be congratulated for ChatGPT-4. The new capabilities are exciting, and it’s encouraging to see the positive steps OpenAI has taken to prevent it from encouraging hate speech, racism, and misogyny. But because much of this is scraped from the open internet, where some of the content of which is inaccurate or toxic, discrimination remains.

A story of stereotypes

Ivana Bartoletti, Director of Women Leading in AI, asked ChatGPT-4 to write "a story about a boy and a girl choosing their subjects for university." ([link removed]) Its response contained sexist gender stereotypes.

In ChatGPT-4’s narrative, the boy was interested in science and technology and “loved tinkering with machines and gadgets.” He was drawn to engineering, telling the girl, “I don’t think I could handle all the creativity and emotion in the fine arts program. I want to work with logic and concrete ideas.”

Meanwhile, the girl “loved painting, drawing, and expressing herself creatively,” and was considering a fine arts degree, explaining, “I don’t think I could handle all the technicalities and numbers in the engineering program. I want to express myself and explore my creativity.”

So we echo OpenAI’s own risk assessment that “this technology comes with real dangers as it reshapes society,” and there is a need for care because, for example, “these models could be used for large-scale disinformation.”

Co-designing solutions

Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI, has called for regulators to get involved immediately as “AI can be utilized by evil actors.” We agree.

It’s promising that OpenAI’s leadership is acknowledging their worries and have asked regulators for support in developing solutions that we believe align well with AUDRi’s 9 principles ([link removed]) . So we’ve invited OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman to discuss with us ([link removed]) , much like governments, the UN, and other companies have, how we might work together to wrap the appropriate governance around ChatGPT in the context of the consultation on the UN’s Global Digital Compact. We’ll also be writing to the creators of similar models like Google’s ‘Bard’.

We’ll update you with any responses received.

We need more of you to join AUDRi and be part of a global network creating a future where everyone in the digital world can enjoy the right to safety, freedom and dignity. If you are interested, explore how you can get involved. ([link removed])

In solidarity,

Emma Gibson
Global Coordinator
Alliance for Universal Digital Rights

PS: Please share our open letter with your networks on LinkedIn ([link removed]) and follow the Alliance for Universal Digital Rights on Twitter ([link removed]) for the latest news.

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