More than 1,300 people, including Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk, have signed an open letter asking artificial intelligence labs to pause their work on advanced AI systems for six months.
The letter calls for an immediate six-month break or longer on the training of any systems that are more powerful than GPT-4.
The letter makes the case that planning and management of AI aren't happening at the appropriate levels.
- Instead, AI labs have been "locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict, or reliably control," it says.
- The signatories are seeking a "public and verifiable" pause of AI training. It suggests that governments should issue a moratorium on AI development if such a pause isn't instituted quickly.
- Pausing the development of AI tools more advanced than GPT-4, which has passed AP exams and the bar exam, will give time for experts to deploy "shared safety protocols" for AI, the letter says.
- Published by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, the letter was also signed by AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, and former U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang.
At the time of this writing, no one from the AI labs OpenAI nor Anthropic had signed the letter, according to TechCrunch.
- Microsoft-backed OpenAI says it has not begun the training process of GPT-5, according to the Wall Street Journal.
- CEO Sam Altman told the WSJ that the company performed safety tests on GPT-4 for over six months before launching it earlier this month.
- "In some sense, this is preaching to the choir," Altman said, referring to the concerns outlined in the letter. "We have, I think, been talking about these issues the loudest, with the most intensity, for the longest."
