Should powerful AI chat programs be banned? OpenAI’s ChatGPT, used by over 100 million people worldwide, is raising all kinds of questions and debates. Every week seems to bring more controversy. Now, countries in Europe are debating whether the service should even be allowed at all.
Italy has temporarily blocked access to OpenAI’s controversial AI chat tool, ChatGPT, citing privacy concerns as the reason. This is the first Western country to ban the service. The service is already blocked in China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.
Now that a European country has decided to ban ChatGPT, it naturally raises the question of whether other Western countries will follow suit. There are also other questions, such as how this will be enforced and whether the ban will be extended to other competing AI services that already exist or that are on the horizon such as Google’s Bard.
The European Union is currently planning comprehensive AI legislation that could apply to all EU countries. Meanwhile, OpenAI is working on complying with privacy laws in Italy and other EU countries.
ChatGPT and other AI services are provoking debates all over the world. Elon Musk has recently called for a 6-month pause on AI development so experts can study the many issues that the technology is bringing up, including privacy, the potential spread of misinformation, and the loss of jobs that widespread use of AI could cause.