It isn't every day we hear the upper echelons of the tech world urging the world to "slow down" the progress in technology. Slowing down tech is taboo. But the tide is changing. The likes of Elon Musk, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak have signed an open letter urging to halt generative AI development (read: ChatGPT) over "profound risk to humanity".
An open letter titled "Pause Giant AI Experiments" written by the Future of Life Institute, an organisation focused on technological risks to humanity has been signed by over 1,300 people so far including big names in the tech world.
Signatories to the open letter want the creators to take a step back and built a safety foundation before racing ahead. The open letter recommends adopting Asilomar AI Principles to avoid the AI arms race and focus on working towards the common good.
📢 We're calling on AI labs to temporarily pause training powerful models!
— Future of Life Institute (@FLIxrisk) March 29, 2023
Join FLI's call alongside Yoshua Bengio, @stevewoz, @harari_yuval, @elonmusk, @GaryMarcus & over a 1000 others who've signed: https://t.co/3rJBjDXapc
A short 🧵on why we're calling for this - (1/8)
Whether it is the latest ChatGPT model giving medical advice and listing possible health issues based on tests and other information or text-to-image search churning out art, there are various concerns big and small related to the advancement of generative AI.
Does this mean that one day, AI systems based on vast data and neural networks are able to think for themselves?
We don't know whether the current AI arms race will unknowingly create an AI system so powerful that it may want to end humanity and take over, or if it will just end humanity due to a difference in our value systems while trying to achieve the same goals.
The AI dystopia bringing an end to humanity doesn't seem too impossible anymore. It also seems very likely to happen in the near future than in the distant future. Like Marie Curie who died due to years of exposure to radiation while studying radioactivity, our experimenting scientists may not realise the dangers of the substance they are holding in their hands right now.
[ALSO READ: Make ChatGPT work for you, not take your job]