Billionaire Elon Musk and a group of experts called on Wednesday for a halt in the creation of powerful artificial intelligence (AI) systems to ensure their safety.
The release of GPT-4 by San Francisco company OpenAI prompted an open letter signed by over 1,000 people. Including Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
According to the company, the latest model is far more powerful than the previous one. Which was used to power ChatGPT, a bot capable of generating lengthy text responses from the briefest of instructions.
“AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity,” according to the open letter “Pause Giant AI Experiments.”
“Powerful AI systems should be developed only when we are certain that their effects will be positive. And their risks will be manageable,” the report stated.
Musk was an early investor in Open AI and served on its board for several years. And his car company Tesla creates AI systems to power its self-driving technology, among other applications.
The letter, sponsored by Musk’s Future of Life Institute, was signed by notable critics as well as OpenAI competitors such as Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque.
‘Reliable and devoted’
The letter cited OpenAI founder Sam Altman’s blog, which suggested that “at some point, it may be important to get independent review before beginning to train future systems.”
“We both concur. “That point has arrived,” the open letter’s writers wrote.
“As a result, we urge all AI labs to immediately halt training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least 6 months.”
They urged governments to intervene and implement a moratorium if companies failed to reach an agreement.
The six months should be spent developing safety procedures, AI governance systems. And refocusing research on making AI systems more accurate, safe, and “trustworthy and loyal.”
The letter did not detail the dangers exposed by GPT-4.
However, researchers such as Gary Marcus of New York University, who signed the letter. Which have long contended that chatbots are excellent liars with the potential to spread misinformation.
Author Cory Doctorow, on the other hand, has likened the AI industry to a “pump and dump” scheme. Arguing that both the potential and the danger of AI systems have been vastly overstated.
