US regulator launches probe into AI companies

FTC investigates AI firms amid concerns over rogue agents and potential threats to humanity within the next decade.

OpenAI is among the companies at the center of the FTC investigation, according to reports [File: Jeff Chiu/AP Photo]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an investigation into several major artificial intelligence companies amid a wave of recent rogue artificial intelligence agents — AI systems that can make decisions and take actions on behalf of users — from firms and claims by former industry insiders that AI could end humanity within the next decade.

The FTC launched the investigation several weeks ago. It was first reported on Wednesday by the New York Post and has since been confirmed by other outlets, including the Washington Post and the Reuters news agency.

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Al Jazeera reached out to the FTC for confirmation but was unable to independently verify the reporting.

The probe marks the first enforcement action by a federal agency examining rogue agents. The investigation was launched amid a wave of incidents, first reported in July, of agents going rogue in testing, including when an OpenAI agent broke out of containment during testing, hacking into the AI firm Hugging Face.

However, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said that he had concerns about the companies beforehand.

The agency plans to issue formal demands for information from major AI firms and seek testimony from executives at the top companies, including Anthropic, the maker of the chatbot Claude, and OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.

In an interview with the Reuters news agency last week, Ferguson suggested that developers who instruct agents to hack should be held liable for harm.

News of the investigation comes a day after United States President Donald Trump met with a handful of AI executives at the White House, including OpenAI’s Greg Brockman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, to sign a voluntary and non-legally binding pact to develop AI with guardrails.

Meanwhile, members of Congress, including the progressive independent Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, alongside House Representative Greg Casar, a Democrat, introduced a bill that would bar development of advanced AI systems until a Cabinet-level agency to oversee them is established.

Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

由于担心人工智能公司可能出现失控的智能体，并在未来十年内对人类构成潜在威胁，美国联邦贸易委员会正在对人工智能公司展开调查。

据报道，OpenAI是FTC调查的核心公司之一。[图片：Jeff Chiu/AP Photo]

由于近期一些公司出现了大量失控的人工智能代理（即能够代表用户做出决策和采取行动的人工智能系统），以及一些前业内人士声称人工智能可能在未来十年内终结人类，美国联邦贸易委员会 (FTC) 已对几家主要的人工智能公司展开调查。

美国联邦贸易委员会几周前启动了这项调查。纽约邮报周三率先报道了此事，随后包括华盛顿邮报和路透社在内的其他媒体也证实了此事。

特朗普推出新网站，简化政府服务获取流程（共 4 条，第 1 条）

列表 2/4：特朗普与科技公司高管签署自愿协议，承诺提供“强有力的”人工智能安全保障

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OpenAI推出“dots”，一款“旨在处理一切”的个人AI助手（共4条结果，此为第4条）。

半岛电视台联系了联邦贸易委员会以求证，但未能独立核实该报道。

此次调查标志着联邦机构首次对失控的人工智能代理采取执法行动。此前，一系列人工智能代理在测试中失控的事件于7月首次被报道，其中包括OpenAI的一款人工智能代理在测试期间突破隔离，入侵了人工智能公司Hugging Face的系统。

然而，联邦贸易委员会主席安德鲁·弗格森表示，他此前就对这些公司有所担忧。

该机构计划向主要人工智能公司发出正式的信息索取要求，并寻求顶级公司高管的证词，其中包括聊天机器人 Claude 的制造商 Anthropic 和 ChatGPT 的创建者 OpenAI。

上周，弗格森在接受路透社采访时表示，指示特工进行黑客攻击的开发者应该对造成的损害承担责任。

就在美国总统唐纳德·特朗普在白宫会见了几位人工智能高管（包括 OpenAI 的 Greg Brockman 和 Anthropic 的 Dario Amodei）并签署了一项自愿且不具法律约束力的协议，以在安全保障下开发人工智能的第二天，有关调查的消息就出现了。

与此同时，包括来自佛蒙特州的进步派独立参议员伯尼·桑德斯在内的国会议员，以及民主党众议员格雷格·卡萨尔，提出了一项法案，该法案将禁止开发先进的人工智能系统，直到建立一个内阁级别的机构来监督它们为止。

OpenAI 和 Anthropic 均未回应半岛电视台的置评请求。