Italy becomes the first Western country to block chatbot ChatGPT over privacy concerns

Italian authorities have banned ChatGPT, the AI-powered language model developed by OpenAI, citing concerns over user privacy. According to a report from The Independent, the country's data protection agency has announced that the service will be blocked and subject to investigation due to the system's lack of a proper legal basis for collecting personal information about its users. This information is utilized to train ChatGPT's algorithm and generate its responses. The move follows growing scrutiny of data privacy in the technology industry, and raises questions about the future of AI services in Europe.

In addition to concerns over user privacy, Italian authorities have accused OpenAI of failing to verify the age of ChatGPT users and enforce rules prohibiting access for those under 13. This could potentially expose young users to "unsuitable answers" from the chatbot, given their relative lack of development, the authorities said.

Move comes on the heels of alarmism over AI

The move is the latest in a series of criticisms leveled against ChatGPT and the underlying AI systems developed by OpenAI. It comes just days after experts called for a pause in the development of new AI tools amid fears of potential dangers posed by the rush to create them.

Old joke about agnostic technologists building artificial super intelligence to find out if there’s a God.

They finally finish & ask the question.

AI replies: “There is now, mfs!!”

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

“We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium," the letter from experts reads. It has been signed by prominent computer scientists and technologists such as Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Turing Award-winning AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio and other leading AI researchers such as Stuart Russell and Gary Marcus. People who wants to know more about AI can listen to Russell and Marcus' conversation with neuroscientist Sam Harris, where both talked about risks associated with AI.