Congress: US Congress limits use of ChatGPT: What is restricted, what’s not – Times of India

The US has become the latest country to limit the use of generative AI-powered chatbots for work. The US House has formulated a set of rules around how congressional offices can use popular AI chatbot ChatGPT launched by Microsoft-backed OpenAI
In a notice to House staffers, Catherine L. Szpindor, chief administrative officer, wrote that offices using the chatbot are “only authorised to use the ChatGPT Plus version of the product.”
This is because the version – which is available from OpenAl as a subscription of $20 per month – incorporates “important privacy features that are necessary to protect House data.”

What is restricted

Houose offices are not authorised to incorporate it into regular workflow.
The staff is not allowed to use ChatGPT with sensitive data. “For example, do not paste into the chatbot any blocks of text that have not already been made public,” the notice said.
The staff is told to use ChatGPT with privacy settings enabled from “Settings” on the main menu of the product.
“These settings ensure that your history is not preserved and your interactions are not incorporated back into the large language model. These settings are disabled by default,”

What is allowed
According to the notice, the use of ChatGPT can be done for research and evaluation only. Moreover, House offices are told that the staff can experiment with the tool “on how it may be useful to congressional operations
AI regulation
The development comes a few days after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Congress to pass new legislation to regulate the AI industry.
“AI could be our most spectacular innovation yet, a force that could ignite a new era of technological advancement, scientific discovery, and industrial might,” he said.
“The first issue we must tackle is encouraging, not stifling, innovation. But if people don’t think innovation can be done safely, that will stifle AI’s development and even prevent us from moving forward,” he added.
Other technology giants like Apple and Samsung have restricted the use of ChatGPT-like tools citing fears that confidential data might leak through the tools.