Apple, others receive letter from Democratic senator to prevent 'malicious' AI use
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Senator Mark Warner (D.-Va.), the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote a series of letters to a number of tech CEOs on Wednesday, asking them to make sure their artificial intelligence is secure and to prevent the "malicious" use of the powerful technology.
"[W]ith the increasing use of AI across large swaths of our economy, and the possibility for large language models to be steadily integrated into a range of existing systems, from healthcare to finance sectors, I see an urgent need to underscore the importance of putting security at the forefront of your work," Sen. Warner wrote. "Beyond industry commitments, however, it is also clear that some level of regulation is necessary in this field."
Senator Warner wrote to Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai. Also receiving letters were Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the CEOs of several privately held companies, including Stability AI, Midjourney, Anthropic and Percipient.ai.
The letters from Sen. Warner come two days after the European Consumer Organization, a lobbying group focused on consumer safety, asked the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network to look into tools such as ChatGPT and Google's (GOOG) (GOOGL) Bard and others to see if they could increase deception, fraud and mis- and disinformation.
Microsoft (MSFT) has invested billions of dollars into OpenAI, maker of the popular ChatGPT chatbot, and has started to integrate the technology into its products and services.
Last month, OpenAI came out with GPT-4, its latest update, and claimed the technology could score higher on the SAT exam than 90% of all test takers.
The Biden Administration laid out a formal request for comment earlier this month to look into potential regulation for artificial intelligence products and services amid concerns about development in the industry.
Last month, tech luminaries such as Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and others wrote an open letter to call for a six-month pause in the development of many AI tools in order to develop new safety standards for the technology.
Others, however, including Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates, have said pausing development of certain AI technology would not solve issues.
"I donât think asking one particular group to pause solves the challenges," Gates said in a recent interview. "Clearly thereâs huge benefits to these thingsâ¦ what we need to do is identify the tricky areas."
The normally pro-business friendly U.S. Chamber of Commerce has also recently called for AI regulation. 
"A failure to regulate AI will harm the economy, potentially diminish individual rights, and constrain the development and introduction of beneficial technologies," the group wrote in a March letter.
The Chamber added that over the next 20 years, "virtually every business and government agency" will use AI, noting that it will have a "profound" impact on society, the economy and national security.
"We must address these issues clearly so that we can shape appropriate responses and achieve our goal, which is to allow the innovation machine to continue to work its magic and improve society, while protecting the basic rights of citizens," the lobbying group added.
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