Skip to main content

Home  »  US business news   »   Elon Musk and others call for pause on AI development over potential risks to “society and humanity”

Elon Musk and others call for pause on AI development over potential risks to “society and humanity”

OpenAI

Elon Musk and others call for pause on AI citing potential risks to humanity

Elon Musk is leading the calls to pause the development of AI-powered systems for at least six months, due to threats to "society and humanity."

Musk and dozens of other prominent tech leaders have signed an open letter from the Future of Life Institute which urges AI labs to stop producing training models more powerful than the revolutionary GPT-4.

The latest version of the technology that powers ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot tool, has just been released.

Read More: 300 million employees could see their jobs replaced by AI, Goldman Sachs study finds

The letter said: “Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources.

“Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though 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.”

The letter suggests nations impose a moratorium, if a pause is not agreed.

Read More: Elon Musk offers Twitter staff stock grants at $20 billion value – half what he paid

Late last year, the rise in interest around ChatGPT fueled a renewed arms race among tech companies to create and use similar AI tools in their products.

Although OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google are at the forefront of this trend, IBM, Amazon, Baidu, and Tencent are all developing similar technologies.

Many firms are also now working on AI writing assistants and image generators.

Need Career Advice? Get employment skills advice at all levels of your career

Experts in artificial intelligence are becoming worried about the possibility of biased responses, the spread of misinformation, and the impact on consumer privacy.

These tools have also raised concerns about how AI can disrupt professions, allow students to cheat, and alter our relationship with technology.

The letter alluded to a greater sense of unease within and outside the industry as a result of AI's fast growth.

AI governance frameworks have already been proposed by several governing bodies in China, the EU, and Singapore.

Source: CNN

Follow us on YouTubeTwitterLinkedIn, and Facebook.