News JVTech “A revolution of which we do not yet know the extent”: After New York, a first city in France prohibits ChatGPT to its employees
Faced with the popularity of artificial intelligence ChatGPT, a French city has decided to ban its use by municipal employees and its partners: this is Montpellier. The municipality is the first in France to position itself in this way.
If ChatGPT presents itself, for many, as a real revolution in many daily uses, Montpellier has decided to resist. This city, located in the south of France, took the initiative to ban the use of the chatbot within its teams, “as a precaution and as a precaution”. She follows suit in New Yorkwho made the same decision last January.
A ban related to security issues
Asked by Free lunchManu Reynaud, the elected official in charge of digital within the town hall of Montpellier, simply explained that this tool, as interesting as it may berepresented “a revolution whose scale we do not yet know”.
“We cannot guarantee that information exchanged with the platform will be protected against possible breaches of security, rights or confidentiality”, he explains. And he’s probably not wrong, since last week, ChatGPT has shown it’s not necessarily great at keeping secrets : the Open AI chatbot gave access to the histories of certain users to other people, creating significant confusion for several hours. If the issue has since been resolved, it highlighted the fact that sensitive data should not be provided to artificial intelligence.
“We ask our agencies not to use it. It is a reminder of the legal framework which implies not transmitting confidential data”added the elected official to BFM TV. In sum, this prohibition does not limit only to employees of the town hall, but also to companies that work with the municipality. “We often call on consulting companies like design offices. So we give them our data. But where do they go? »asks Manu Reynaud.
The need for ChatGPT framework, but…
The elected representative of Montpellier also points the finger the deception that can generate the use of ChatGPT, potentially capable, according to him, of carrying out in a few hours a job that would manually require several days, even several weeks. This, he says, would be “a legal imbalance” for contracts. “You are given a car, but without the license or the instructions. Except that the car took years to install, now it’s almost a matter of hours. »
However, Manu Reynaud admits: despite the municipality’s requests not to use ChatGPT, it is impossible for them to really ensure that this request is respected. “The means of control do not yet exist”, he summarizes. If there are many sites that propose to analyze texts to estimate whether they were produced by a human or by an AI, the results given are generally inconclusive.
The town hall of Montpellier intends to launch an in-depth study on the subject of artificial intelligence. This should help her determine if using ChatGPT can benefit her in the future.
