Pittsburgh Review

Carnegie Mellon University’s K&L Gates Initiative in Ethics and Computational Technologies sponsored and co-organized an expert convening in Washington, D.C., on “Evaluating Generative AI Systems: the Good, the Bad and the Hype.” The event, organized in partnership with The GenLaw Center, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Georgetown Law, took place at Georgetown University Law Center on April 15.

During the conference, Zachary Lipton, the Raj Reddy Associate Professor of Machine Learning and chief technology officer and chief scientist of Abridge, emphasized the challenges in regulating generative AI. He stated, “Any binding rules or guidance will either skew conservative, including only what’s necessary but being insufficient for usefulness and safety, or skew wide, presenting a set of binding requirements that are inapplicable to most actual deployments. We need to create real, practical guidance with teeth that’s sufficiently robust to help people develop useful technology.”

Furthermore, Hoda Heidari, K&L Gates Career Development Assistant Professor in Ethics and Computational Technologies at CMU, highlighted the significance of the advancements in generative AI. She pointed out, “With the rise of modern generative AI, we are at an inflection point. Recent technological advances in this space have significantly lowered barriers to apply AI to real-world tasks and problems. While these models appear to have impressive capabilities, they also alter and expand the landscape of risks and harms.”

Heidari also emphasized the need for effective evaluation approaches for generative AI, stating, “On the technical side, we face a dire need for effective, holistic and reliable approaches to evaluating the capabilities and risks of GenAI for the concrete problems that practitioners and policymakers are grappling with. By putting technological experts, policymakers and civil society in direct conversation with one another, this event both highlighted and bridged the gap between existing approaches to evaluation and the needs and desires of policymakers, practitioners and the public more broadly.”

The conference addressed key themes outlined in President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI, including training-data attribution, privacy, data provenance and watermarks, and trust and safety. It also provided updates on AI regulation and evaluation from various organizations.

Policy briefs summarizing the outputs of the event are expected to be released in the future.