OpenAI has no plans to leave Europe – CEO By Reuters
© Reuters. PHOTO: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testifies at a Senate Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and Law hearing entitled “AI Oversight: Rules for Artificial Intelligence” on Capitol Hill in Washington, USA, May 16, 2023. REUTERS/Elizabeth Fra
Supant Mukherjee
(Reuters) – OpenAI has no plans to leave Europe, CEO Sam Altman said on Friday, reversing a threat earlier this week to leave the region if it becomes too difficult to comply with future AI laws.
“We are excited to continue working here and certainly have no plans to leave,” he tweeted.
The EU is working on what could be the first set of rules on a global scale to govern AI, and Altman said on Wednesday that the current draft of the EU AI Law is “over-regulatory.”
Altman’s threat to leave Europe drew criticism from European industry chief Thierry Breton and a host of other lawmakers.
Altman has spent the past week traveling across Europe, meeting with top politicians from France, Spain, Poland, Germany and the UK to discuss the future of AI and the progress of ChatGPT.
He called his tour “a very productive week of talking in Europe about how best to regulate AI!”
ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot powered by Microsoft (NASDAQ:) has created new opportunities for AI, and concerns about its potential have sparked excitement and alarm—and led to conflict with regulators.
OpenAI first ran into regulators in March when Italian data regulator Garante shut down the app domestically, accusing OpenAI of violating European privacy rules. ChatGPT is back online after the company introduced new privacy measures for users.
OpenAI on Thursday said it would provide 10 equal grants from a $1 million fund for experiments to determine how AI software should be managed, and Altman called the grants “how to democratically decide the behavior of AI systems.”
