Tech billionaire Elon Musk is calling for an “immediate” halt to the development of AI systems more powerful than OpenAI’s controversial GPT-4 language model.
In an open letter signed by several thousand IT professionals, researchers and tech executives, Musk points to potential risks to society if development is not halted immediately.
What does the open letter say?
The letter, published Wednesday evening and signed by more than 1,000 AI professionals and tech executives, calls for a six-month development hiatus. During this time, security protocols for AI systems must be developed, implemented and verified by independent experts.
“Powerful AI systems should only be developed if we are sure that their effects are positive and their risks are manageable,” the Reuters news agency quotes from the letter.
It goes on to say:
If the AI industry does not accept the proposed pause for thought, the authors of the open letter are calling on state regulators to step in.
Who signed the open letter?
Signatories include Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, bestselling author Andrew Yang, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn and DeepMind developer Victoria Krakovna.
Also listed are:
- Yoshua Bengio, AI pioneer
- Stuart Russell, AI pioneer
- Tom Diethe, AstraZeneca, Head of Machine Learning
- Emad Mostaque, CEO of Stability AI (Alphabet)
- Yuval Noah Harari, historian
- Evan Sharp, co-founder of Pinterest
The letter has been published on the website of the Future of Life Institute. It is an online petition and can be countersigned by anyone interested.
According to the European Union’s Transparency Register, the Future of Life Institute is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation, as well as the London-based effective altruism group Founders Pledge and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Reuters notes.
Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the University of Washingtontweeted that the real risks and harms are never about “overpowered AI”, but rather about “concentration of power in the hands of humans, replication of suppression systems, damage to the information ecosystem and damage to the natural ecosystem (through wasteful use with energy resources)” .
(dsc)
What are the signatories warning about?
In their document, the signatories point out the potential risks to society and civilization of AI systems. “Should we allow machines to flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth?” it asks.
And further: “Should we develop non-human beings that can eventually outnumber us, outsmart, obsolete and replace us?”
It is about nothing less than the loss of control over our civilization, they say.
Europol also warns
Just a few days ago, the EU police authority Europol warned that criminals would use artificial intelligence like ChatGPT for fraud and other cybercrime.
According to a report by the European police authority based in The Hague, this offers ‘dark prospects’. In the future, the rapidly evolving skills of chatbots will not only be used to improve humanity, but also to deceive them.
Since its release last year, Musk co-founder OpenAI’s Microsoft-backed ChatGPT has pushed other companies to accelerate the development of similar large language models (LLM).
ChatGPT creates texts using artificial intelligence. Users can enter individual commands or phrases, which the system then independently completes using huge amounts of data from the Internet.
Sources
- futureoflife.org: “Breaking Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter”
- reuters.com: “Musk, experts urge pause in training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4”
(t-online/dsc)
Source: Watson
I’m Ella Sammie, author specializing in the Technology sector. I have been writing for 24 Instatnt News since 2020, and am passionate about staying up to date with the latest developments in this ever-changing industry.
