Why Japan wants to block generative AI. Report Wsj
Telecommunications company NTT and major newspaper Yomiuri publish a manifesto calling for new laws to curb generative AI. The Wall Street Journal 's in-depth analysis
Japan 's largest telecommunications company and the country's largest newspaper have called for swift legislation to limit generative artificial intelligence, saying democracy and social order could collapse if AI was left unchecked.
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, or NTT, and Yomiuri Shimbun Group Holdings made the proposal in an AI manifesto released Monday. Along with a law passed in March by the European Parliament that limits some uses of AI, the manifesto highlights growing concern among American allies over the AI programs that US companies have developed on the front lines.
WILL GENERATIVE AI COLLAPSE THE SOCIAL ORDER?
The Japanese companies' manifesto, while highlighting the potential benefits of generative AI in improving productivity, took a generally skeptical view of the technology. Without providing details, he said AI tools have already begun to harm human dignity because they are sometimes designed to capture users' attention without regard to morality or accuracy.
If AI is not curbed, “in the worst case scenario, democracy and social order could collapse, leading to wars,” the manifesto reads.
The manifesto says Japan should immediately take response measures, including laws to protect elections and national security from the abuse of generative AI.
A global push to regulate AI is underway, with the European Union at the forefront. The new EU law requires manufacturers of the most powerful AI models to subject them to safety assessments and to notify regulators of serious incidents. There is also a ban on the use of artificial intelligence for emotion recognition in schools and workplaces.
THE PROBLEM OF REGULATION
The Biden administration is also ramping up surveillance, invoking emergency federal powers last October to force major AI companies to notify the government of the development of systems that pose a serious national security risk. The US, UK and Japan have created government-led AI safety institutes to help develop AI guidelines.
However, governments in democratic nations are struggling to figure out how to regulate AI-powered speech, such as social media activity, given constitutional and other protections for free speech.
NTT and Yomiuri said their manifesto was motivated by concern about public discourse. The two companies are among the most influential in Japan in the political sphere. The government still owns about a third of NTT, a former state-controlled telephone monopoly.
The Yomiuri Shimbun, which has a morning circulation of about six million copies according to industry data, is Japan's most read newspaper. Under the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his successors, the newspaper's conservative editorial line was influential in pushing the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to expand military spending and deepen the nation's alliance with the United States.
The two companies said their executives have been examining the impact of generative AI since last year in a study group led by researchers at Keio University.
Yomiuri news pages and editorials often highlight concerns about artificial intelligence. In a December editorial, noting the rush of new AI products from U.S. tech companies, it said that “AI models could teach people how to make weapons or spread discriminatory ideas.” The article cited risks from sophisticated fake videos purporting to show politicians speaking.
WHAT NTT DOES
NTT is active in AI research and its units offer generative AI products to enterprise customers. In March it began offering these customers a model for big languages, called “tsuzumi,” similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT, but designed to use less computing power and work better in Japanese-speaking contexts.
An NTT spokesperson said the company works with U.S. tech giants and believes generative AI has valid uses, but added that the company believes the technology poses particular risks if used maliciously to manipulate the public opinion.
Afresh's technology crunches six years of sales data on every product in the fresh food section of a grocery store it partners with. Its AI tool can understand when people buy avocados and at what price. It can combine this data with data on how quickly avocados deteriorate and, in turn, recommend how many avocados to keep in stock.
(Extract from the eprcomunicazione press review)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/giappone-ia-generativa/ on Sun, 14 Apr 2024 06:15:19 +0000.