Elon Musk and other tech leaders are calling for a pause in the 'dangerous race' toward AI. as advanced as humans
Elon Musk and dozens of other tech leaders have called on AI labs to stop developing systems that can compete with human-level intelligence.
In an open letter from the Future of Life Institute, signed by Musk, Apple
Co-founder Steve Wozniak and 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang have urged AI Labs to stop training models more powerful than GPT-4, the latest version of language modeling software developed by American startup OpenAI.
“Contemporary AI systems are now becoming competitive with humans in common tasks, and we must ask ourselves: Should we allow machines to flood our information channels with propaganda and falsehood?” Read the letter.
“Should we automate all jobs, including compliance? Should we develop non-human minds that can eventually outnumber, outsmart, and replace us? Should we risk losing control of our civilization?
The letter added: "Such decisions should not be delegated to unelected technology leaders."
The Future of Life Institute is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization that advocates for the responsible and ethical development of artificial intelligence. The founders are MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn.
The organization has previously gotten the likes of Musk and the Google-owned artificial intelligence lab DeepMind to commit to never developing lethal autonomous weapons systems.
The institute said it asked all AI labs to "immediately suspend training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least 6 months."
GPT-4, which was released earlier this month, is said to be much more advanced than its predecessor GPT-3.
“If such a pause cannot be implemented quickly, governments must step in and establish a moratorium,” he added.
ChatGPT, the viral AI chatbot, has amazed researchers with its ability to produce human responses to user prompts. In January, ChatGPT had 100 million monthly active users just two months after launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer app ever.
The technology has been trained on vast amounts of data from the internet and has been used to create everything from William Shakespeare-style poetry to drafting legal opinions on court cases.
But AI ethicists have also raised concerns about potential abuses of the technology, such as plagiarism and misinformation.
In the letter from the Future of Life Institute, technology and academic leaders said artificial intelligence systems with human and competitive intelligence pose "serious risks to society and humanity."
"AI research and development must be refocused on making today's advanced and powerful systems more accurate, secure, interpretable, transparent, robust, fine-tuned, reliable, and loyal," they said.
OpenAI was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, has reportedly received a $10 billion investment from the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant. Microsoft also integrated the company's GPT natural language processing technology into the Bing search engine to make it more conversational.
Google then announced its own competing consumer conversational AI product called Google Bard.
Musk has previously said that he believes AI poses one of the "biggest risks" to civilization.
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and CEO of SpaceX co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with Sam Altman and others, though he left OpenAI's board in 2018 and no longer has a stake in the company.
He has criticized the organization several times recently, saying he believes it is straying from its original purpose.
Regulators are also scrambling to become familiar with artificial intelligence tools as the technology evolves at a rapid pace. On Wednesday, the British government published a white paper on AI, delegating to various regulators the oversight of the use of AI tools in their respective industries by applying existing laws.