Musk, Wozniak join call to pause giant AI experiments for 6 months

SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter CEO Elon Musk and Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak, and a slew of other tech personalities, have joined the call to pause giant AI experiments amid concerns their longterm effects may become unmanageable.

In an open letter to all AI labs, the signatories call the immediate pause for at least 6 months of the training of AI systems that are more powerful than Microsoft and OpenAI’s GPT-4.

The signatories highlight that “AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity” and should only be developed “once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.”

This includes a 6-month pause of the AI systems training, the development, and implementation of safety protocols for advanced AI design and development, as well as the development of robust AI governance systems.

You can read the full letter below:

As of writing, the letter has 1,344 signatories. Aside from Musk and Wozniak, notable signatories are Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA) Founder and Scientific Director Yoshua Bengio; Director of the Center for Intelligent Systems, and co-author of the standard textbook “Artificial Intelligence: a Modern Approach” Professor Stuart Russell; and 2020 Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang.

Skype Co-Founder Jaan Tallinn, Pinterest Co-Founder Evan Sharp, Getty Images CEO Craig Peters, and many other personalities have also signed the open letter.