'Guardrails are missing' AI firms need democratic oversight, says top expert

Companies developing powerful artificial intelligence systems must have independent board members representing the interests of society”, according to an expert regarded as one of the modern godfathers of the technology.

- Dan Milmo

Yoshua Bengio, a co-winner of the 2018 Turing award referred to as the Nobel prize of computing” said AI firms must have oversight from members of the public as advances in the technology accelerate rapidly.

Speaking in the wake of the boardroom upheaval at the ChatGPT developer OpenAl, including the exit and return of its chief executive, Sam Altman, Bengio said a democratic process” was needed to monitor developments in the field.

“How do we make sure that these advances are happening in a way that doesn’t endanger the public? That they’re not abused for increasing one’s power?” the AI pioneer challenged.

“To me, the answer is obvious in principle. We need democratic governance. We need an inclusive set of people on the board of these organisations, who can have visibility on what is going on and can act ina way different from the regulators. We need regulators but we also need people inside who are independent of the company and represent the interests of society.”

Bengio, a full professor at the University of Montreal and the founder and scientific director of Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, said he was concerned that despite recent turmoil at OpenAI there would not bea slowdown in AI development.