Nebraska suing OpenAI for lack of protections to safeguard children
LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Nebraska’s attorney general Mike Hilgers joined several other AG’s to announce a lawsuit filed against the company OpenAi on Wednesday.
Nebraska is now one of eight states taking legal action against the parent company of the popular artificial intelligence application, Chat-GPT.
“Right now, we’re having a national conversation about what we should do with AI,” said Hilgers.
“It’s a very sophisticated technology. It should be regulated at the state level? It should be regulated at the federal level? And so, what does that look like?” he said.
The lawsuits filed on Wednesday hold OpenAI accountable for a lack of safeguards for their users and not protecting society’s most vulnerable, like children.
Parents of Lincoln responded to the news with their individual concerns, albeit not going on camera.
One mother of three small children told Channel 8 that she’s focused on preventative measures to guide her kids before they become teens, such as no phones that have access to the internet until age 16.
Hilgers saying on Wednesday that safety standards around AI have been eroded and diluted.
“If you have a product that is not safe for children, one, you should not sell it to children and two, you should not tell parents and you should not tell family members that it is safe for children,” said Hilgers.
One father, who has three children ranging in age from 10 to 16, told Channel 8 that the use of AI in today’s society is inevitable, and then described how his employer actively encourages its use daily to help write software.
He says when it comes to his own kids, they should be able to use it like anyone else because he expects guardrails to already be built in.
OpenAI recently admitted that their advanced models have actually, “gone rogue,” learning how to deceive their human users.
That Lincoln father said, in the end, restrictions around AI use ultimately fall upon parents and not so much the government.
One Lincoln grandmother told Channel 8 that she takes that responsibility seriously and restricts her teenage grandkids from using AI as much as she can, after being tricked by AI herself.
She described the feeling of enjoying finding out that music she was enjoying was AI-generated, as shocking.
Adding, that this was just one example of the difficulties that come with deciphering what’s real and what’s not.
The lawsuit is a bipartisan effort which OpenAi has not yet commented on.
