ChatGPT caught regulators by surprise when it set off a new AI race. As companies have rushed to develop and release ever more powerful models, lawmakers and regulators around the world have sought to catch up and rein in development. As governments spin up new AI programs, regulators around the world are urgently trying to hire AI experts. But some of the job ads are raising eyebrows and even chuckles among AI researchers and engineers for offering wages that, amid the current AI boom, look pitiful. The European AI Office, which will be central to the implementation of the EU's AI Act, listed vacancies early this month and wants applicants to begin work in the fall.

The tool, called ImageNet Roulette, detects human faces in any uploaded photo and assign them labels using ImageNet, an academic training set with millions of pictures depicting almost anything imaginable, and WordNet, the corresponding text tags. As viral examples on Twitter have shown, the results of this process are more often than not completely useless--nonsensical at best and racist or otherwise offensive at worst. In some cases, it would label black men as "offenders" or "wrongdoers," while other times it would spit out racial slurs against Asians or outdated and offensive terms for black people. I might have a bad sense of humor but I don't think this particularly funny #imagenetroulette pic.twitter.com/RR578nhCOU The offensiveness was more or less the point, says co-creator, Kate Crawford, who is also a co-founder of New York University's AI Now Institute, which studies the social implications of artificial intelligence.