Japan considers using artificial intelligence for bureaucratic procedures and meets with ChatGPT managers
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met on Monday in Tokyo with the head of OpenAI, the firm behind the popular artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, to address regulatory aspects related to this technology and its possible adoption for bureaucratic tasks.
The Japanese leader received in his Tokyo office on Monday Sam Altman, CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, who noted that they discussed “the advantages of artificial intelligence technology and how to reduce its disadvantages,” in statements to local media after the meeting.
Altman also conveyed to Kishida “the advantages that its use could have for Japan,” and raised the possibility that OpenAI, a company based in San Francisco (USA) and which has Microsoft among its main investors, to open an office in the Asian country.
Asked at a press conference on Monday about the government’s position on ChatGPT, government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno stressed that although “other countries such as Italy are temporarily banning its use,” Japan believes the new technology “may lead to both merits and concerns“for its potential impact.
The spokesman added that Japan “is going to study the possibility of its use. for administrative tasks“without affecting the jobs of civil servants, while “analyzing the evolution” of technology and taking the necessary measures to prevent the leakage of secret information or personal data.
Last week, Japan’s minister of digitalization, Taro Kono, expressed in the same vein his desire to “actively consider” the use of generative artificial intelligence for the work of ministries and agencies of the Japanese government.
Altman is also scheduled to meet Monday in Tokyo with a group of lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to. address legislative issues and the feasibility of using the latest version of the GPT (generative pretrained transformer) chat in public administration.
Another potential issue to be addressed at the meetings is discussions within the G7 on these latest applications of artificial intelligence, as Japan holds the rotating presidency of the Group of Seven, and will host a summit of its leaders at the end of next month in Hiroshima.
