OpenAI’s Sam Altman tells POLITICO France is looking good, as he pledges to comply with EU rules.
The CEO of OpenAI, the maker of the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, spent last week touring the Continent, stopping in Spain, France, Poland, Germany and the United Kingdom. He was at once talking AI regulation with policymakers — he met national leaders Pedro Sánchez, Emmanuel Macron, Mateusz Morawiecki, Olaf Scholz, and Rishi Sunak — and scouting locations for an OpenAI European office.
“We really need an office in Europe,” Altman told POLITICO at a Paris event Friday. “We also just really want one.” Under the European Union’s upcoming Artificial Intelligence Act, companies with EU-based users would need a presence in the bloc, with national “supervisory authorities” in charge of implementing the regulation. The eventual choice of its HQ location will, therefore, determine which member country will oversee it when it comes to enforcing the AI Act.
Since its launch in November 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT — a bot able to create texts such as songs, scripts, articles and software based on written prompts — has caused both optimism and anxiety about what the rise of AI means for the future of humankind. While some have marveled at the tool’s prowess in creating computer code and streamlining office work, others fear that it could be used to generate troves of automated disinformation, manipulative content and biased material — or even put millions of people out of a job.