OpenAI backs Bills in US Congress on AI and biological weapon threats

WASHINGTON - OpenAI is endorsing a series of bipartisan Bills before the United States Congress that the company says will help to prevent artificial intelligence (AI) models from accelerating the threat of biological weapons and synthetic viruses, a company spokesperson said on Sept 15.

The ChatGPT-maker is endorsing the Web of Biological Data Act, the AI-Ready Bio-Data Standards Act and the Scale Biology Act, the spokesperson said. Politico earlier reported the endorsements.

OpenAI is also backing a key provision of the Frontier Act that requires leading AI companies to embed independent evaluators to assess the safety of their models, the spokesperson said.

Concerns about advanced AI have escalated, with heads of top US AI labs including OpenAI also calling for a slowdown in the pace of advanced AI development.

Last week, OpenAI said it ​was pushing for mandatory national AI safety requirements in the US. REUTERS