In what appears to be fears among founders that the tail is beginning to wag the dog, Techpreneur Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter, has joined over 1,000 tech experts and industry leaders in signing a provocative open letter urging the world’s top Artificial Intelligence labs to pump breaks on new super-powerful AI systems for six months. The petition, dubbed “Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter,” claims the latest advances in AI on claims of “profound risks to society and humanity.”
The letter is interesting because the list of signatories includes prominent names from both within and without the world of tech. Some prominent tech heads include Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, Emad Mostaque, who founded London-based Stability AI; and Yoshua Bengio, the founder and scientific director at Mila. Others are engineers from Amazon, DeepMind, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, besides academics. Nonetheless, it also includes others not involved in tech such as a self-described electrician and an esthetician among others.
Call for a pause on experiments
Elon Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, the research lab responsible for ChatGPT and GPT-4, is an advisor to the petition’s author, the non-profit organization The Future of Life Institute (FLI), the organization calling for pausing AI experiments, citing fears of future safety protocols. One wonders why AI Labs researchers and experts would ask for a pause so AI systems are made “public and verifiable, and include all key actors,” or governments step in and institute a moratorium.
After supporting its development through a 2015 open letter that claimed its development would benefit society, despite some potential dangers, Elon Musk seems to be telling the world AI could “nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us.” It is therefore comical to expect regulators can catch up in six months.
Compete with humans at general tasks
The letter specifically singles out the current version of OpenAI’s GPT-4 and mentions what they believe are genuine fears. In its website, the company claims GPT-4 is more accurate, human-like, can analyze and respond to images. Is there any proof? Yes, GPT-4 passed a simulated bar exam that allows someone to become a licensed attorney.
Moreover modern AI systems have “plugins,” making them compete with humans at general tasks such as looking up data on the open web, planning holidays, and even ordering groceries. There’s now real fear among the creators and strongest advocates that should it go on unchecked, AI could automate away all jobs, and eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete, and replace humanity.
Lose control of our civilization
It is ironic that the open letter comes only two months after a revelation that Elon Musk was developing an AI Chat Chatbot that would be “less restrictive and politically correct” to rival ChatGPT. If the same tech innovators now fear AI and warn that we risk losing control of our civilization to their own creation, what do they expect of the common people?
Only time will tell whether AI Labs will actually implement the six months pause to develop and implement safety protocols for AI designs that will guarantee our safety beyond a reasonable doubt. On the other hand, the six month hiatus could present an opportunity for a competitor to design, implement and surpass them and we end up in a deeper sinkhole.
