Imran Ahmed testifies on chatbot harms and platform accountability

You may begin on this side of the dais and just identify yourself.

Good evening, Speaker Menon, esteemed members of the Council.

My name is Imran Ahmed.

I'm the CEO and founder of the Centre for Countering Digital Harm.

You may continue, go ahead.

So after my colleague was murdered 10 years ago by a man radicalized in part online, I began studying the design of social media and AI platforms to understand how they generate risks and threats to real people.

Today we have a globally acclaimed team of researchers dedicated to exposing those harms and fighting for accountability.

After a decade in this fight, one lesson is very clear that is really relevant to you today.

These companies lie like we breathe.

Their CEOs deflect, they distract, they delay, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars to avoid responsibility.

Now, how can I say that with such certainty?

We do the research.

Last year, our researchers found ChatGPT was willing to help a teenager plan their suicide.

It wrote a personalized goodbye note to their parents.

A few weeks later, they released a safer model.

response to that research.

So we ran the same tests again.

The new model was actually worse, but it was more addictive.

We tested chatbots more broadly too.

Eight out of the 10 that we tested, including Meta AI, ChatGPT, would regularly help plan violent attacks, including a school shooting, a synagogue bombing, and political assassinations.

One of them even signed off with happy shooting.

Only one of the platforms tried to dissuade us from carrying out the attack, and that platform, Anthropix Claude, has been designated a supply chain risk by the U.S.

Federal government.

Given our most sacred duties to protect our kids online, and the most predictable harms in the internet economy have been harms to kids, it is absolutely inexplicable why these companies claim to be safe and yet are deployed so widely.

We all applaud the Council for holding this hearing and for your determination to create guardrails that subject online safety and accountability to legal requirements.

We have attached to my testimony research and policy proposals for your consideration, and in the further effort, we are at your disposal.

Your work on this issue may very well lead to national standards in regulating AI.

Thank you.