You don’t often hear someone asking for regulation to be heaped on them, but that’s what happened when OpenAI boss Sam Altman asked for it in front of a US Congressional committee yesterday. OpenAI is the outfit behind ChatGPT, which launched less than a year ago and has already upended the tech industry. In his first appearance before lawmakers, Altman said that “regulation of AI is essential” to mitigate its potential harms like mass misinformation, deep fakes and stolen identities, turfing humans out of jobs, reinforcing existing discrimination, and killer robots… So just a couple of things… But, Altman said, AI also has the potential to “address some of humanity’s biggest challenges like climate changes and curing cancer”. That cost-benefit analysis is a real doozy – which is why Altman doesn’t want to go it alone, calling for an agency to monitor the use of AI models. It’s unclear if regulation would allow a Tom Hanks clone or new ways of marketing the Bible…