An open letter signed by Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter chief executive Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and over 2,600 tech experts has called for a pause on artificial intelligence (AI) development.
Citing “profound risks to society and humanity,” the open letter urged AI firms to “immediately pause” AI systems surpassing GPT-4 for a minimum of six weeks.
It read: “AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts. These protocols should ensure that systems adhering to them are safe beyond a reasonable doubt.”
It added the pause would not block AI development but would be a step back from the “dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities.”
What’s in the Letter?
The United States-based think tank, Future of Life Institute (FOLI), published the letter on 22 March. Global AI experts also said, “human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity.”
It continued: “Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources. Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening.”
It also cited security threats such as flooding information channels with “propaganda and untruth,” corporate dominance of AI technologies, and automating jobs, among others.
Currently, OpenAI’s Chat GPT-4 is the latest version of its AI programme and is roughly 10 times more intelligent than the initial ChatGPT release.
Furthermore, Galaxy Digital’s chief executive, Mike Novogratz told investors he had been surprised over global governments’ focus on cryptocurrency regulations rather than AI.
He said in a 28 March shareholders call: “When I think about AI, it shocks me that we’re talking so much about crypto regulation and nothing about AI regulation. I mean, I think the government’s got it completely upside-down.”
Musk Views on AI at World Government Summit
The news comes after Musk voiced his concerns at a recent event in Dubai, where he said that AI was “one of the biggest risks to the future of civilization.”
At the World Government Summit, the tech giant explained that ChatGPT was “both positive or negative and has great, great promise, great capability.”
Musk, the co-founder of OpenAI which developed ChatGPT, added “with that comes great danger.”
He continued that the AI programme had “illustrated to people just how advanced AI has become. The AI has been advanced for a while, It just didn’t have a clear user interface that was accessible to most people.”
When asked about the lack of regulation on AI compared to other technologies, he concluded: “I think we need to regulate AI safety, frankly. It is, I think, actually a bigger risk to society than cars or planes or medicine.”
