If you haven’t looked at Twitter in the last week or so, you are missing out. Not that I care for Elon Musk or any egotist billionaires, I find it interesting that big leaders in the tech space are advocating for a temporary ‘stop’ in AI development. We have spoken about AI in this class for the past couple months and have seen the pros and cons of developing AI. In this case, the petition brought up concerns that AI with human-competitive intelligence can pose serious hazards to society and mankind. Its goal is to urge AI based firms to “immediately cease” developing AI systems that are more potent than Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) for at least six months. The open letter has been signed by more than 2,600 tech industry leaders and researchers and over 6,000 total signatures.
This petition in particular has divided big names in the tech space for those who are for the petition and those who are against it. A list of notable industry figures include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and Emad Mostaque, CEO of Stability AI – the company responsible for inventing stable diffusion. On the opposite end, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Satvik Sethi and former Web3 executive at Mastercard have actively advocated against the AI petition. Armstrong tweeted, “Don’t ever let fear stop progress, and be wary of anyone trying to capture control in some central authority.” Sethi similarly expresses that the big signers have deeply invested interest in AI and are trying to slow down their competition.
The biggest reason big leaders are asking for this halt is to give time to these companies in order to develop safety protocols that would make AI systems more accurate, safe, trustworthy, and loyal. The petition advocates ideally for these AI companies to take it upon themselves to halt the development of further AI for six months. Should they not do this, the open letter suggests that the government step in. The government has stepped into potential threats such as human cloning and eugenics and stopped the further development. The petition compares the previous events with this current AI threat and to treat it with the same caution.
As mentioned in the open letter, “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable”. This statement brings up several issues we have seen with AI such as the loss of jobs to AI, information channels prompting propaganda and explicit information, and threats to consumer privacy. We have seen AI take the world by a storm and it brings the question if we have given companies enough time to create backup or safety plans to this changing AI.
Change brings about good and bad. Ultimately, I don’t believe we can control AI development to only bring up positive enhancements in our society. We can truly only mitigate the risks that are associated with implementing AI within our everyday lives. Companies have seen the rise of AI and need to make the effort to adapt to these advancements in the technology space. I personally wouldn’t compare the development of AI to cloning human babies to that extent, but I do believe there should be some government regulation. This leaves the question – Would you sign the petition for the temporary halt in further AI development?
Sources:
Musk, Wozniak, and other tech leaders sign petition to halt further AI developments | ZDNET
Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter – Future of Life Institute
Elon Musk-led petition to halt AI development divides tech community (cointelegraph.com)