The petition led by Elon Musk to stop the development of artificial intelligence divides the technological community
Brian Armstrong said that any technological development should not stop based on the fears of a few.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak signed an open letter signed by more than 2,600 technology industry leaders and researchers. The letter called for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) to be temporarily halted.
The petition shared the concern that AI with competitive human intelligence could pose serious dangers to society and humanity. It urged all AI companies to "immediately cease" development of AI systems more powerful than Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) for at least six months. GPT-4 is a large language multimodal model created by OpenAI and the fourth in its GPT series.
The petition, while supported by many, has divided the tech community at large over halting developments. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong was one of many notable names who voiced their opposition to the petition.
Armstrong, in a tweet, said that "committees and bureaucracy won't solve anything." He added that there are no designated "experts" to decide on this issue, and that not everyone in the tech industry agrees with the petition.
Armstrong reminded that any new technology carries certain dangers, but the goal must be to keep moving forward. He added that centralization in decision-making will not bring anything good.
"Let us never let fear stop progress, and let us be wary of anyone who tries to seize control in any central authority." Armstrong tweeted.
LA Times columnist Brian Merchant called the Musk-led petition an "apocalyptic carnival of AI hype." He added that many of the concerns expressed are things about the "robotic jobs apocalypse."
Satvik Sethi, a former Web3 executive at Mastercard, called the request a "non-proliferation treaty but for AI." He added that many of the popular list signatories have a deep personal interest in the field of AI and are likely just "trying to slow down their peers in order to get ahead." “