Elon Musk Joins Tech Leaders in Urging Pause on Giant AI Experiments

Elon Musk, along with other prominent tech leaders, signed an open letter calling for a pause on giant AI experiments. 

The letter, published by the Elon-backed nonprofit Future of Life Institute, urged artificial intelligence labs to halt the training of AI systems for at least six months due to “profound risks to society and humanity,” adding that the pause should apply to systems “more powerful than GPT-4.” 

It also encouraged independent experts to use the proposed pause to develop a system of protocols to ensure the safe use of AI tools. 

“This does not mean a pause on AI development in general, merely a stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities,” it explained. 

The letter then urged AI developers to work with policymakers to speed up the development of AI governance systems, including oversight and tracking of AI and pools of computation capability and watermarking systems that distinguish real from synthetic, among others.  

“This pause should be public and verifiable and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium,” it added.  

“Society has hit pause on other technologies with potentially catastrophic effects on society. We can do so here. Let's enjoy a long AI summer, not rush unprepared into a fall,” the letter concluded. 

Aside from Twitter’s CEO, among the letter’s signatories include Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, Pinterest Co-founder Evan Sharp and more. 

The call to pause comes only two weeks after OpenAI’s GPT-4, ChatGPT’s successor has been unveiled to the public.  

With the ability to process an estimated 25,000 words, respond to images and more accurately imitate a user’s specific writing style, its fast development has raised both amusement and concern among the tech community.