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Tesla’s billionaire owner and a group of AI experts and industry executives are calling for a six-month pause on development of systems more powerful than OpenAI’s recently released GPT-4, in an open letter citing potential risks to the society.
The tone could not have been more apocalyptic to warn of what awaits society: are tech companies moving too fast in deploying a powerful intelligence that could one day outsmart humans?
That’s the conclusion of a group of leading computer scientists and other tech industry notables, including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who are calling for a six-month pause to consider the risks of this accelerated development of artificial intelligence.
Their petition was posted on Wednesday, March 29, in response to the recent release of GPT-4 by San Francisco startup OpenAI, the most advanced version of the ChatGPT chatbot that sparked a race between tech giants Microsoft and Google to submit similar apps.
“Society has taken a break from other technologies with potentially catastrophic effects on society. We can do it here. Let’s enjoy a long summer break from AI and don’t rush to fall unprepared,” says the open letter published by the agency. non-profit Future of Life Institute funded by Musk.
That’s why we’re calling on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.
Here’s what we think should happen before we train even larger models (7/8): pic.twitter.com/Zk422xR8kb
—Future of Life Institute (@FLIxrisk) March 29, 2023
ChatGPT has captivated users by engaging them in human-like conversations, composing songs, and summarizing long documents. However, according to the letter, “powerful artificial intelligence systems should be developed only once we are sure that their effects will be positive and their risks are manageable.”
“AI stresses me out,” the eccentric Musk, one of the co-founders of industry leader OpenAI and whose automaker Tesla uses artificial intelligence for its autopilot system, said earlier this month.
Tesla last month had to recall more than 362,000 vehicles from the US market to update its software after regulators said the driver assistance system could cause accidents.
The letter was signed by more than 1,000 people, including Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, researchers at Alphabet-owned DeepMind, and industry heavyweight Yoshua Bengio, often referred to as one of the “godfathers of artificial intelligence”, and Stuart Russell, a research pioneer in the field.
With Reuters, EFE and AP
