US Representative Jake Auchincloss made history with a speech in the House of Representatives – not because of its content, but because of its author: Auchincloss had his speech written by the chatbot ChatGPT. He is the first known parliamentarian to have given a speech in Congress written by artificial intelligence.
The reason for the democrat’s appearance was the submission of a bill to establish an American-Israeli AI center in the USA, which is to serve as a hub for research and development in the field. With the presentation of a text created by ChatGPT, he also wanted to stimulate the debate about the challenges and possibilities of artificial intelligence, said Auchincloss to the Associated Press (AP) news agency. He wants to prevent the same thing happening with AI as with the advent of social media, which started small and spread faster than Congress could react with its legislation.
“I’m the youngest parent in the Democratic Group,” said the 34-year-old. “AI will be a part of my life and it could be a multipurpose technology for my kids.”
Chatbots such as ChatGPT, which was developed by the company “Open AI” and has been available free of charge since the end of November, enable users to specify subject areas and certain parameters for which the software formulates answers, speeches, essays, letters of application, poems, letters and all kinds of other texts, which should sound as if a human had written them. In view of the technical advances in the field, this is becoming increasingly successful – and brings with it problems, for example in the field of education. For example, ChatGPT recently made headlines when it was announced that the bot passed an exam from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
According to its own statements, the US broadcaster WBZ NewsRadio received a copy of Auchincloss’ specifications to ChatGPT for his speech. Accordingly, the deputy instructed the bot as follows:
“You are Jake Auchincloss, a member of Congress. Write 100 words that you will present in the House of Representatives! Topic: the importance of the US-Israel Joint Center for Artificial Intelligence bill that the Congressman will be introducing again in this legislature. “
Auchincloss included a link to the draft law and a related press release, then entered the content objective:
“Explain to the audience the importance of international collaboration in AI research!”
He chose his writing style:
“Formal Speech”.
WBZ also published a copy of Auchincloss’ speech:
“Madam Chairperson, I stand here today because I plan to re-introduce the United States-Israel Artificial Intelligence Center Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation that will cement a mutually beneficial partnership between the United States and Israel in artificial intelligence research This is a crucial step forward at a time when artificial intelligence and its implications are taking center stage in public discourse.
We must work with international partners, such as the Israeli government, to ensure that the United States maintains its leadership in AI research and development and responsibly explores the many possibilities that emerging technologies offer. The US-Israeli Artificial Intelligence Center Act will allow us to harness the expertise of both countries and draw on each other’s resources to research and develop breakthrough AI advances.”
“There were probably about a dozen of my colleagues in the plenum,” Auchincloss reported to the AP news agency after his speech. “I bet none of them knew it was written by a computer.”
One should not be instinctively hostile to artificial intelligence, but neither should one wait too long before drafting measures or new laws to regulate the technology, the MP urged. “It’s not about intelligence in the human sense,” he was quoted as saying by the US broadcaster CBS News. “They’re models with more than a trillion parameters that predict the next word in a sentence or the next pixel in an image. They’re incredibly good at that and getting better all the time. But they’re prediction engines, they’re not intelligence. They are tools.”
Quellen: WBZ News Radio 1030, CBS News, Associated Press
