In an open letter, Elon Musk and a group of AI experts and industry executives are calling for a six-month break in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s just-launched GPT-4, citing potential risks to society. But pause the artificial intelligences is it really possible?
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Earlier this month, Microsoft-backed OpenAI unveiled the fourth iteration of its Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) artificial intelligence program, which amazed users by engaging them in human-like conversations, composing songs and summarizing long documents.
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“Powerful AI systems should only be developed when we are sure that their effects will be positive and their risks manageable“, reads the letter published by the Future of Life Institute.
The non-profit organization is mainly funded by the Musk Foundation, from the London group Founders Pledge and from Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
The letter for the pause of Artificial Intelligences
“AI scares meMusk said earlier this month, even though he’s a co-founder of the industry-leading company OpenAI and his automaker Tesla uses AI for the autopilot system.
What does Elon Musk ask for Artificial Intelligence
Musk has called for a regulator to ensure AI development serves the public interest, starting with putting artificial intelligences on hold.
“It’s deeply hypocritical for Elon Musk to sign given how hard Tesla has fought liability for the faulty AI of its self-driving cars“, he has declared James Grimmelmann, professor of digital and information law at Cornell University. “A break is a good idea, but the letter is vague and doesn’t take regulatory issues seriously“.
Last month Tesla has had to recall more than 362,000 vehicles to update software after American regulators said the driver assistance system could cause crashes, prompting Musk to tweet that the word “recall” for an over-the-air software update is “anachronistic and simply wrong!“.
OpenAI does not respond to Musk’s letter
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the open letter, which urges the development of advanced AIs to be halted until they are developed security protocols shared by independent experts and invites developers to work with policy makers on governance.
“Should we let machines flood our news outlets with propaganda and falsehoods? …Should we develop non-human minds that could outnumber us, be smarter, make us obsolete, and replace us?“, he asked himself in the letter, stating that “such decisions should not be delegated to unelected technology leaders“.
The letter was signed by over 1,000 peopleincluding Musk. Sam Altmanthe chief executive officer of OpenAI, was not a signatory to the letter. Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, CEOs of Alphabet and Microsoft, also did not sign.
Among the co-signatories are the CEO of Stability AI Mother Mostaqueresearchers at Alphabet-owned company DeepMind, and AI heavyweights Joshua Bengiooften referred to as one of the “godfathers of AI”, e Stuart Russella pioneer of research in this field.
The concerns come as ChatGPT draws the attention of US lawmakers with questions about its own impact on national security and education. EU police Europol on Monday warned of the potential for misuse of the system in phishing, disinformation and cybercrime attempts.
Meanwhile, the UK government has tabled proposals for an “adaptive” regulatory framework on AI.
Since its release last year, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has pushed ad rivals accelerate the development of similar large-scale language modelscompanies, including Alphabet Incare racing to enrich their products with AI.
Investors, wary of relying on a single company, are embracing OpenAI’s competitors.
Microsoft declined to comment on the letter, and Alphabet has not returned calls for comment.
“Much of the power to develop these systems has consistently been in the hands of a few companies that have the resources to do so“, he said Suresh Venkatasubramanianprofessor at Brown University and former assistant director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
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