More than 2,600 technology leaders and researchers have signed an open letter urging a moratorium on further artificial intelligence (AI) development, fearing "profound risks to society and humanity".
The letter was issued by the Future of Life Institute (FOLI), an American think tank, on March 22. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and many AI CEOs and CTOs and researchers signed the letter. The institute called on all AI companies to "immediately suspend" training AI systems stronger than GPT-4 for at least six months, sharing concerns that "human competitive intelligence may pose profound risks to society and humanity," among other things.
"Advanced artificial intelligence could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth and should be planned and managed with commensurate care and resources. Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening," the institute wrote.
GPT-4, the latest version of OpenAI's artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, was released on March 14. To date, it has passed some of the most rigorous US high school and law exams with scores in the 90% range. It is known to be 10 times more advanced than the original version of ChatGPT. There is an "out-of-control race" among AI companies to develop ever more powerful AI that "no one not even their creators can understand, predict, or reliably control," FOLI claims. The biggest concerns are whether machines will flood information channels, potentially bringing in "propaganda and lies", and whether machines will "automatically take away" all jobs.
FOLI takes these concerns a step further, showing that the entrepreneurial efforts of these AI companies could pose an existential threat: "Should we develop non-human minds that may eventually surpass us, surpass us, become obsolete and replace us? Should we risk losing control of our civilization?" The institute also agrees with OpenAI founder Sam Altman's recent statement that independent scrutiny is needed before training future AI systems.
In his Feb. 24 blog post, Altman emphasized the need to prepare robots for artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI).
Not all AI experts are eager to sign the petition, though. SingularityNET CEO Ben Goertzel explained in a Twitter reply to Rebooting.AI author Gary Marcus on March 29 that language learning models (LLMs) will not become AGI, and there has been little development of AGI to date. Instead, he said research and development of things like biological and nuclear weapons should be slowed down: In addition to language-learning models like ChatGPT, AI-powered deepfakes are being used to create convincing image, audio, and video pranks. The technology is also being used to create AI-generated artwork, and there are concerns about whether it could violate copyright law in some cases.
Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz recently told investors that he was shocked by the level of regulatory focus on cryptocurrencies and how little attention has been paid to artificial intelligence.
“When I think about AI, it strikes me that we talk so much about regulation of cryptocurrencies and not at all about regulation of AI. I mean, I think the government is completely upside down,” he said in March. 28th shareholder conference call. FOLI argues that if the moratorium on AI development is not implemented quickly, the government should engage in the moratorium.
"Such a suspension should be public and verifiable, and include all key players. If such a suspension cannot be implemented expeditiously, the government should step in and suspend," it wrote.
