On March 23, 2023, some leaders in the field of cutting-edge technology signed a letter calling for artificial intelligence (AI) developers to pause their work for six months.
The letter warns of potential risks to society and humanity as tech giants such as Google and Microsoft race to build AI programs that can learn independently.
The warning was on the heels of the release of GPT-4 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), an AI program developed by OpenAI with backing from Microsoft.
“Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” the letter said.
Signatories to the letter included big names such as Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, researchers at Alphabet-owned DeepMind, and AI heavyweights Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russel, as well as household names such as Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
The letter says “recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict, or reliably control.”
Geoffrey Hinton, the man who won the ‘Nobel Prize of computing’ for his work on neural networks and is known as the godfather of AI, is now speaking against the dangers of artificial intelligence.
He started speaking up shortly after he resigned from Google.
Well, in an interview on Monday with the New York Times as reported by CNN, which was first to report his move, Hinton said he was concerned about AI’s potential to eliminate jobs and create a world where many will “not be able to know what is true anymore.”
He also pointed to the stunning pace of advancement, far beyond what he and others had anticipated.
“If it gets to be much smarter than us, it will be very good at manipulation because it will have learned that from us, and there are very few examples of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing,” Hinton told Tapper on Tuesday.
“It knows how to program so it’ll figure out ways of getting around restrictions we put on it. It’ll figure out ways of manipulating people to do what it wants.”
Hinton is not the only tech leader to speak out with concerns over AI.
Tell us what you think: Should the World Ponder on the Call to Pause AI development?
