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Elon Musk and AI Experts Sign An Open Letter Petitioning to Pause ‘Giant AI Experiments’
By Shubhendu Vatsa - News Published:
Just when AI was getting off the ground and things were looking smooth, several AI experts, including Elon Musk, have come together to sign an open letter asking AI companies worldwide to halt the development and training of large-scale AI systems for “at least 6 months,” due to the “profound risks to society and humanity” these software poses. Published by the non-profit Future of Life Institute, the letter cautions that AI systems such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 are becoming “human-competitive at general tasks,” thus posing a potential risk to humanity and society. The open letter requested AI labs to pause training any tech more powerful than GPT-4 and also requested governments to step in and create a moratorium if the pause “cannot be enacted quickly.”
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Image: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg
This comes at a time when several giant tech firms are clamouring to come up with smart AI systems like ChatGPT, without giving much thought to the potential pitfalls and dangers it might pose. The letter reads, “Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks, and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.”
The letter even contends that there is a “level of planning and management” that is simply “not happening.” Instead of taking things slow and steady, several unnamed “AI labs” have been “locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.” Some well-known signatories include Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, politician Andrew Yang, and numerous prominent AI experts and CEOs, including Stuart Russell, Yoshua Bengio, Gary Marcus, and Emad Mostaque.
Even Tesla’s chief, Musk is one of the signatories of this open letter, which isn’t surprising considering his fairly cautious stance over AI security. Musk has been an advocate of the safe and fair use of AI for a long time now and has reiterated on many different occasions that the unchecked development of artificial intelligence systems poses a potentially existential threat to society. As of writing, no OpenAI workers have signed the letter, although CEO Sam Altman’s name did pop up briefly only to vanish quickly thereafter.
While AI might not be a distant dream anymore, tech companies still have a long road ahead and will need to tread cautiously when it comes to developing sentient-level technology that could potentially change the course of human history. The letter concludes with a reassuring reminder, saying, “Society has hit pause on other technologies with potentially catastrophic effects on society. We can do so here. Let’s enjoy a long AI summer, not rush unprepared into a fall.”
You can check out the letter in its entirety for yourself here.
Visit Future of Life Institute
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