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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission will examine the ascent of AI technology across all front , said FTC Chair Lina Khan , speaking at TechCrunch ’s StrictlyVC event in Washington , D.C. , on Tuesday . However , the agency ’s goal is not to crush the startups that are aiming to compete in this space with increased regularisation , Khan say .
“ We want to make certain that the arteries of commerce are open , that the pathways of commerce are open , and if you have a good idea , if you ’re able to commercialize it — if there ’s interestingness in the market — that you have a sightly crack at contend , ” Khan told the audience . “ Your fortune is tied to the strength of your idea on your business organisation endowment , rather than whether you ’re threatening one of the swelled guys who could stomp you out . ”
Still , the FTC is not ignoring the engineering or its potential trauma . In fact , it ’s already seeing an uptick in consumer ailment cases in some areas , like voice - cloning fraud , Khan said .
That type of engineering recently made headlines as OpenAI released then deplume a ChatGPT voice thatsounded like actress Scarlett Johansson , who famously voice the AI in the motion-picture show “ Her . ” The actress claims she refused OpenAI ’s pass to record her voice for the chatbot , so it cloned her instead . ( OpenAI exact it just used another voice actress . )
Asked which areas of AI the FTC was watching , Khan explained that it was everything .
“ We ’re really bet across the stack — so from the chips to the cloud , to the models , to the downstream apps — to examine to realise what ’s run short on in each of these layers , ” she said . Plus , the agency is looking to get word from “ folks on the land ” about what they see as both the opportunities and the risks .
FTC Chair@linakhanFTCemphasized the importance of regulatory interposition to open up up markets for startup innovation during today’s@StrictlyVCeventpic.twitter.com/VHQAbMylI9
Of course , police AI comes with its challenges , despite the phone number of technologist the FTC has take to serve in this country . Khan noted the organization have magnetic north of 600 applications from technologists assay work at the FTC but did n’t say how many of those were really hired . In total , though , the agency has around 1,300 mass , she say , which is 400 people few people than it had in the 1980s , even though the economy has arise 15 times over .
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With scores of antimonopoly cases and snug to a hundred on the consumer aegis side , the agency is now turning to innovational tactics to help it fight fraud , especially in the AI blank space .
For example , Khan mentioned the agency’srecent voice - cloning challengewhere it ask round the market and the populace to submit ideas as to how an agency like the FTC would be capable to discover and supervise in a more real - meter mode whether a sound call or vocalism is literal , or if it ’s using voice cloning for fallacious design . In gain to source winning idea from challenges like this , the FTC hop to also spur the marketplace to focus on developing more mechanisms to defend AI fraud .
Another domain of direction for the FTC is the focus on what openness really means in the AI context of use , Khan explained . “ How do we make certain it ’s not just a branding exercise , but when you look at the terms it ’s in truth candid ? ” she asked , adding that the agency wanted to get onwards of some of those “ open first , closed later ” dynamics that were antecedently seen in the Web 2.0 era .
“ I think there ’s just a lot of lessons to be larn , generally , but I think especially this moment , as we ’re thinking about some of these AI dick , is a very right moment to be applying them , ” Khan said .
In addition , the office is balance to watch the industry for AI hype , where the economic value of the intersection is being overstate . “ Some of these AI tool we remember are being used to market , and to kind of inflate and exaggerate , the value of what may be offered . And so we desire to make indisputable that we are policing that , ” Khan noted . “ We ’ve already had a duet of AI hype / deceptive advertising cases get out — and it ’s an country we ’re continuing to scrutinize . ”
