Leaders in the field of artificial intelligence seek to halt the development of strong AI systems due to concerns that humanity may be in danger.
They claim the rush to build AI systems is out of control and have signed an open letter warning of potential consequences.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, is one of those who wants to stop training AIs above a certain capacity for at least six months.
Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple, and a few DeepMind researchers also signed.
The developer of ChatGPT, OpenAI, recently unveiled GPT-4, a cutting-edge technology that has stunned observers with its aptitude for tasks like identifying objects in images.
The letter, from the Future of Life Institute and signed by the luminaries, requests a temporary halt to development at that stage and warns of the dangers that potential future, more sophisticated systems may present.
“AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity,” it says.
The Future of Life Institute is a not-for-profit organisation which says its mission is to “steer transformative technologies away from extreme, large-scale risks and towards benefiting life”.
Mr. Musk, the owner of Twitter and the CEO of the automaker Tesla, is named as the organization’s external adviser.
Advanced AIs need to be developed with care, the letter says, but instead, “recent months have seen AI labs 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”.
The letter issues an alert that artificial intelligence (AI) could automate occupations and saturate information channels with false information.
The letter comes in response to a recent study by the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which predicted that while AI will probably enhance productivity, it also had the potential to automate millions of jobs.
Some experts said that it was very difficult to anticipate how AI would affect the labor market.
BBC
