Meta’s Oversight Board has a warning for AI companies building their own watchdogs

Members of Meta’s Oversight Board, the longest-running experiment of independent oversight in the tech industry, have some advice for AI companies looking to launch their own independent safety committees — give boards real power, or they will not mean much.

The board has spent six years ruling on the company’s content moderation decisions. Members said in interviews that the independent safety committees that AI companies, including Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, XAI and Nvidia, pledged to create last week could become little more than window dressing unless they’re given a clear mandate, real independence and the ability to push back.

“If it’s going to be genuine oversight, there’s going to be friction between the company and the body,” Paolo Carozza, a member of the Oversight Board and a professor of law and political science at the University of Notre Dame, said about the board’s recommendations for AI company oversight.

“If that friction doesn’t exist, it’s a sure sign that there’s no effective independent oversight going on,” he said.

The Oversight Board, an entity legally independent from Meta that has final say on certain social media issues at the company and offers nonbinding advice on a plethora of other topics, issued an…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business