Time.news – A tug of war between the right to privacy and technology. ChatGPT in the middle of a test of strength of platforms – in this case OpenAI – who aim to exercise their power over states by taking advantage of a lack of cohesion at the European level.
A real one arm wrestling, between the Privacy Guarantor and artificial intelligence software that risks penalizing Italian companies. This is the analysis of Stefano Epifani, president of Digital Sustainability Foundation after OpenAI’s decision to suspend ChatGPT in Italy after the investigation opened by the Guarantor for the collection considered “illegal” of personal data.
“The Guarantor raised his voice – observes the expert in conversation with the Time.news – e OpenAI has thrown a punch. On the merits, the Guarantor was right to raise his voice but in the method there were more effective ways, such as first agreeing with the other European guarantors and choosing a shared path”.
For Epifani, OpenAI’s choice to immediately block access to the platform “aims to put pressure on our country. They could have waited 20 days instead they said goodbye to Italy after a few hours”. And the pressure is above all on the Italian Authority. “The guarantor is currently under enormous pressure. At the moment, the platforms are making themselves stronger from the European division. Instead we should have the strength to come to an agreement. L’Europacompared with other world blocks, is a minestrone which, however, when put together weighs a lot. European privacy law is one of the most advanced in the world and even in the US they are taking it as a model”.
Meanwhile, the president of the Digital Sustainability Foundation warns of the possible risks for the Italian system linked to the ChatGPT technology. If this block were to extend to theApplication programming interface (API) “could create one competitive disadvantage for companies working on applications related to this type of artificial intelligence”.
In short, the technology linked to ChatGPT, used in Italy by millions of people, does not only concern students who ‘exploit’ it for classwork but is linked to an entire sector active for example on the drafting of codes or publishing companies that work on text part. “The real theme – this is Epifani’s analysis – is of a social-political type: the choice is whether privacy or the need to rush on the subject of innovation weighs more. The stiffeners risk being harmful because they only lead to polarization and not to shared solutions”