Should There Be Enforceable Ethics Regulations on Generative AI?

The growing potential of generative AI is clouded by its possible harms, prompting some calls for regulation. ChatGPT and other generative AI have taken centerstage for innovation with companies racing to introduce their own respective twists on the technology. Questions about the ethics of AI have likewise escalated with ways the technology could spread misinformation, support hacking attempts, or raise doubts about the ownership and validity of digital content. The issue of ethics and AI is not new, according to Cynthia Rudin, the Earl D. McLean, Jr. professor of computer science, electrical and computer engineering, statistical science, mathematics, and biostatistics & bioinformatics at Duke University She says AI recommender systems already have been pointed to for such ills as contributing to depression among teenagers, algorithms amplifying hate speech that spurred the 2017 Rohingya massacre in Myanmar, vaccine misinformation, and the spread of propaganda that contributed to insurrection in the United States on January 6, 2021. "If we haven't learned our lesson about ethics by now, it's not going to be when ChatGPT shows up," says Rudin.