Musk joins others to call for pause on AI
By Abimbola Mohammed
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder and several others have joined people calling for a six-month pause on Artificial Intelligence (AI).
An open letter posted on Future Life Institute, a non-profit website, read: “Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks. Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us?”
“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 added.
The non-profit is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation, as well as London-based group Founders Pledge, and Silicon Valley Community Foundation, according to the European Union’s transparency register.
Musk had earlier this month said: “AI stresses me out.” He expressed frustration over regulators critical of efforts to regulate the autopilot system, and has sought a regulatory authority to ensure that development of AI serves the public interest.
Co-signatories included Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, researchers at Alphabet-owned DeepMind, and AI heavyweights Yoshua Bengio, often referred to as one of the “godfathers of AI”, and Stuart Russell, a pioneer of research in the field.
Gary Marcus, a professor at New York University who signed the letter, said: “The letter isn’t perfect, but the spirit is right: we need to slow down until we better understand the ramifications. The big players are becoming increasingly secretive about what they are doing, which makes it hard for society to defend against whatever harms may materialize.”
The letter was signed by more than 1,000 people, including Musk.
Sam Altman, chief executive at OpenAI, was not among those who signed the letter. Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, CEOs of Alphabet and Microsoft, were not among those who signed either.
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