The risk of adopting Generative Artificial Intelligence is as great as the opportunities the technological revolution presents, industry experts have disclosed.
They stated that as businesses begin to deploy genAI, there would be compliance, operational, reputational, and regulatory risks. They pinpointed quality control, accuracy, and misinformation as the key concerns emerging around the use of genAI.
In a post titled, ‘Generative AI risks: How can chief legal officers tackle them?’ on the International Telecommunication Union website, Partner Engagement Manager, and Nivedita Sen, Initiatives Lead, Institutional Governance, World Economic Forum, Kenneth White, said, “Organisations are navigating a complex web of regulatory responses to rapidly evolving technology.
“In addition to the role of governments in developing AI rules and regulations, there is a growing awareness of the important role of industry self-regulation in safeguarding the interests of citizens and society, in addition to fiduciary obligations to shareholders.
“While the balance between government regulations and private sector investment in self-regulation varies across countries, there is a growing push for regulatory agencies (e.g. NIST’s AI Safety Institute Consortium) to collaborate with industry in the development of genAI governance standards.”
Other leaders from the World Economic Forum’s Chief Legal Officers also weighed in on the potential risk of AI.
The Group General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Infosys, Inderpreet Sawhney, said the unauthorised use of copyrighted material to train large language models is an emerging intellectual property risk in the development of genAI products.
Sawhney stated, “On similar lines, licenses of several AI models place restrictions on usage of AI generated output for training or fine tuning another AI model. Interestingly, this trend is seen in licensing practices of both open and closed model providers. User organizations should take a careful look at this other new age risk created by AI.
“The other key issue about intellectual property ownership of AI-generated content is that it requires legal certainty across the jurisdictions. Absence of such ownership will have varying degrees of commercial consequences for different industry sectors. The laws need to be harmonized across countries by engaging all relevant interest groups.”
The General Counsel and Head of Legal and Compliance, Siemens, Andreas Hoffman, decried the lack of harmonised regulation in the space.
Hoffman declared, “Gaps and lack of clarity on the applicability of existing regulations, as well as divergence of emerging AI regulations pose another risk for global enterprises.
“A patchwork of new regulations is emerging on the horizon, including the EU’s AI Act and the US Executive Order on AI Safety and Security issued on 30 October 2023. The divergence is not only at the national level but also at municipal and sector-wide levels.
“In the US alone, over 25 states introduced AI related legislation in 2023. The polycentric and fragmented nature of the AI regulatory landscape pose a serious risk for enterprises operating in diverse sectors and geographies.”
Other experts noted the need to build trust by harnessing the power of AI in a way that requires regulators, businesses, and civil society to work together and abide by guidelines and guardrails.
GenAI’s growth is expected to leap in 2024. Recently, the International Monetary Fund stated that 40 per cent of global employment is at risk because of artificial intelligence.
