Letter signed by Elon Musk demanding AI research pause sparks controversy
A letter co-signed by Elon Musk and thousands of others demanding a pause in artificial intelligence research has created a firestorm, after the researchers cited in the letter condemned its use of their work, some signatories were revealed to be fake, and others backed out on their support.
On 22 March more than 1,800 signatories – including Musk, the cognitive scientist Gary Marcus, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak – called for a six-month pause on the development of systems “more powerful” than that of GPT-4. Engineers from Amazon, DeepMind, Google, Meta and Microsoft also lent their support.
Developed by OpenAI, a company co-founded by Musk and now backed by Microsoft, GPT-4 has developed the ability to hold human-like conversation, compose songs and summarise lengthy documents. Such AI systems with “human-competitive intelligence” pose profound risks to humanity, the letter claimed.
“AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts,” the letter said.
The Future of Life institute, the thinktank that coordinated the effort,cited 12 pieces of research from experts including university academics as well as current and former employees of OpenAI, Google and its subsidiary DeepMind. But four experts cited in the letter have expressed concern that their research was used to make such claims.
When initially launched, the letter lacked verification protocols for signing and racked up signatures from people who did not actually sign it, including Xi Jinping and Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, who clarified on Twitter he did not support it.
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