In this article, we’ll look at the reasons behind the growing concerns about privacy and the actions taken by countries, including Canada, as they investigate the potential issues with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Key Takeaways:
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has initiated an investigation into OpenAI’s widely popular language app, ChatGPT.
A claim has been made stating that the chatbot, which uses artificial intelligence, gathers, utilizes, and reveals personal data from users without first getting their permission.
Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne has declared that AI technology and its impact on privacy are a top priority for his office.
With technological advancements evolving rapidly, the commissioner aims to remain abreast of these changes to ensure the protection of user privacy.
Canada is not alone in its concerns over ChatGPT.
Italy was the first country to announce an investigation into the AI app to determine if it unlawfully collects data on its citizens and if the technology poses a threat to minors under the age of 13.
The Italian Guarantor for the Protection of Personal Data took the unprecedented step of temporarily banning ChatGPT by blocking access to the free online demo.
Other countries, including Germany, France, and Ireland, are closely monitoring the situation to ascertain whether ChatGPT violates the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules.
With increasing global attention on ChatGPT, the pressure on OpenAI to address privacy concerns intensifies.
The core privacy issues with ChatGPT stem from its training methodology.
Powered by the GPT-3.5 large language model, ChatGPT was trained on vast amounts of text scraped from the internet.
Consequently, it is highly likely that the AI has ingested some personal information during this process.
Authorities are concerned that this data could be extracted by users querying the bot. OpenAI has already implemented a filter to prevent its older GPT-3 model from divulging sensitive data such as phone numbers.
Although personal information would have to be publicly available on the internet for the bot to ingest it during training, ChatGPT could potentially facilitate the discovery of such information more easily.
Furthermore, there are broader privacy concerns when users interact with ChatGPT.
It remains unclear how OpenAI is handling, storing, or using the private, sensitive information that users may inadvertently share with the model.
Companies like Amazon have warned their employees against sharing confidential information with ChatGPT, such as proprietary code.
Concerns about data leaks escalated when an open-source library bug temporarily caused the software to reveal snippets of other users’ conversations and payment data.
As the corporate world becomes increasingly reliant on AI and machine learning technologies, the need for robust security measures and privacy protection grows more urgent.
The investigations into OpenAI’s ChatGPT serve as a stark reminder of the need for adequate safeguards when it comes to AI technology and privacy.
As countries try to balance the benefits and dangers of artificial intelligence, they are thinking about creating new laws and rules to categorize AI software and tools according to their level of risk.
In the USA, for example, the Federal Trade Commission received a complaint from the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy, claiming that ChatGPT doesn’t meet the standards for being transparent, understandable, fair, and responsible.
With prominent figures in the tech industry, such as Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, calling for a six-month pause on the deployment of AI technology, the global discourse on the responsible development and implementation of AI is heating up.
