Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak have signed an open letter calling for a halt to the training of neural networks. The signatures under the open letter were put by more than 1000 experts.
Creators of artificial intelligence (AI) need to stop the research of powerful systems. An open letter with such a call appeared on the website of the Future of Life organization on March 28. It was signed by the head of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter Elon Musk, Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, among others.
The authors of the text ask: “Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda? Should we automate all jobs? Should we develop non-human minds that can eventually outnumber us, outsmart us, make us redundant, and replace us? Should we risk losing control of our civilization?”
The letter’s authors point out that major research suggests that AI systems with intelligence comparable to humans could pose a danger to society.
“We call on all labs researching artificial intelligence to immediately stop, for at least six months, training systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause must be public and valid. If such a pause cannot be made quickly, state governments should intervene and impose a moratorium,” the text of the letter emphasizes.
Industry experts believe that training should be halted until common safety protocols are in place. At the same time, independent experts should control the observance of the break, the letter said. The signatories of the document include more than 1,000 people – these are specialists and managers of companies related to the industry.
In early February, ChatGPT became the fastest growing service in history. The service had about 100 million active monthly users. This figure was achieved just two months after the launch of the site. In January 2023, the number of unique chatbot users reached 13 million, which is twice as many as in December 2022. By comparison, it took TikTok nine months to achieve this.