We're pleased to launch 'Interviews with Innovators,' where we'll explore AI topics in-depth with experts from diverse backgrounds. Today, our guest is a person with lots of responsibilities on his shoulders: please meet Che Chang, General Counsel at OpenAI*

We’ve discussed how the OpenAI legal team uses ChatGPT, how they navigate legal uncertainty around new technology, and how they operate across different jurisdictions. Che also offered guidance for enterprises on navigating risks and liability when working with GenAI and provided insights into the future. Let’s dive in!

How OpenAI Navigates the AI Regulatory Landscape – Chat with GC Che Chang

Ksenia: Let's do a little time traveling. On December 1st, 2022, we all woke up to a new world propelled by generative AI, and it was all instigated by OpenAI's launch of ChatGPT. So you, as a legal advisor, have to be always a few steps ahead. Did you anticipate what has happened? How did your professional life change since then?

Che Chang: It's changed a bit. ChatGPT has been a kind of a life-changing experience for a lot of people. At the time we were optimistic that it would do well, but we were not certain. We put it out there and were really surprised and amazed by the reception.

ChatGPT is based on technology that has been around for years – even prior versions that didn’t have this conversational interface could already be used on the OpenAI website for a long time. So that part did surprise us a little bit.

Something about having the technology in a way that was easily accessible and understandable to people, I think really resonated across the world.

Ksenia: A few of our readers asked if you use ChatGPT on a day-to-day basis?

Che Chang: We use it a lot internally. I remember when we were first testing GPT-4, it wasn’t always factually accurate, and I remember thinking, no one will ever use this for legal purposes because that's crazy, right? Your lawyer can't be wrong two out of ten times.

But there are companies and partners of ours who have tapped into it and figured out a way to make it useful, with context, access to the right databases, etc.

We use it internally for a lot of different reasons. One very popular internal OpenAI use case has been to use it to summarize meetings - having meetings recorded, transcripts created, notes summarized telling you who was there, action items, and follow ups.

Personally, my legal team uses it for things we want to publish or talk about publicly, and have it say "make this easier to understand," "write this in more plain English," "don't use legalese." It's very useful that way and has been very popular.

Ksenia: Have you gotten any good legal advice from it?