OpenAI Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman — days after making comments that he might pull out of Europe if he didn’t feel he could meet the EU’s regulations — said he plans to comply with the bloc’s rules.
In discussions with EU regulators, OpenAI wants “to make sure it is able to comply,” he said during a speech in Paris on Friday, his latest stop in a round-the-world tour that will take him to the Middle East and Asia. He’d previously visited London, Munich and Warsaw this week, but skipped Brussels.
Read More: OpenAI’s Altman Clashes With EU Commissioner Over AI Regulation
“Most of the regulation being proposed about licensing frameworks and safety standards makes total sense,” Altman said about the current AI regulation projects being discussed worldwide. “It’s mostly been quite productive.”
Before coming to Europe, Altman spoke in Washington where he called for more regulations and said his “greatest fear” was that the technology would cause significant harm.
The EU’s AI Act is on track to be the first comprehensive legislation to address artificial intelligence. While the original proposal focused on regulating its use rather than the technology itself, the European Parliament proposed new rules that specifically target large language models after the explosion in popularity in generative AI.
For now, OpenAI is focused on building a “better, faster and cheaper model” of its generative AI ChatGPT product, Altman said, after the product kicked off a global arms race among tech companies to build their own versions of the technology.
