Science & Technology

Tech leaders call for 6-month pause on development of advanced AI

By T.K. Randall
March 30, 2023

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) For years, many prominent figures in the tech industry, including Elon Musk and the late Prof Stephen Hawking, have warned us about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence once it matches or exceeds the intellectual capabilities of its creators.

Recently, we've seen a considerable leap in the sophistication and abilities of AI with systems such as ChatGPT offering a glimpse of a future in which many human roles will become totally redundant.

Now an international group of AI founders, industry leaders and specialists has written an open letter demanding that the development of such advanced systems be halted for a period of six months so that more work can be done to assess the risks such platforms pose to humankind.

The signatories of the letter include Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, as well as some of the people who worked on AI systems such as ChatGPT and DeepMind."We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4," the letter states.

"This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium."

"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. This does not mean a pause on AI development in general, merely a stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities."

The full letter can be read - here.

Source: BBC News

Tags: Artificial Intelligence