Elon Musk and other prominent tech entrepreneurs wrote an open letter to warn humanity of the risks posed by AI, calling for a pause in its research.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the center of the technological debate all over the world. While many think it is the future of progress, others warn against its possible risks. On Wednesday, prominent entrepreneur Elon Musk signed an open letter calling for a halt in AI research for at least six months.
Elon Musk himself is the co-founder, along with Sam Altman, of OpenAI. This is the software developer that created the infamous ChatGPT, a program capable of creating any text using a simple request prompted by the user.
ChatGPT is now at its fourth iteration, and is currently funded by Microsoft after a $10 billion purchase of OpenAI.
The rest of the market did not sit idle, as Google announced its own AI text-generator: Bard. Despite the initial failure of attracting investors, both Google and Microsoft are now pouring billions in AI development.
Many believe that artificial intelligence will be this generation’s “invention of the internet” and that will provoke a societal change of cataclysmic proportions. If it is true that AI is able to replace copywriters or computer engineers (ChatGPT is also capable of writing code), millions of jobs will be lost.
And this is why Elon Musk, who mingled for years with artificial intelligence, is now wary of this technology.
Profound risks
Elon Musk is CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter. With Tesla, an EV manufacturer, he always strived to reach a commercially available self-driving vehicle. Though such a car does not exist yet, Tesla’s research advanced AI technologies to unprecedented levels.
And yet, Musk and other tech entrepreneurs decided now that artificial intelligence actually poses “profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research and acknowledged by top AI labs,” as the letter opens.
Musk and the other writers, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, believe that AI is an incredibly delicate technology whose development should not be rushed. “AI research and development should be refocused on making today’s powerful, state-of-the-art systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal,” the letter said.
Furthermore, the letter argued that AI machines risk flowing the internet with misinformation and propaganda, becoming human-competitive at general tasks.
Therefore, they concluded, AI research should momentarily pause to redirect efforts towards a safer progress, at least for the next six months.
Elon Musk left the board of OpenAI in 2018 and sold off all his stakes.
It is unlikely that, after such massive investments, tech companies will actually pause research and development of AI softwares, especially at a time when they’re in everyone’s mouth.
Nevertheless, legislators will have to step in to regulate this new technology, as it happens whenever the tide of the progress flows.
