Elon Musk and over 900 other tech leaders have signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause in training new super-powerful artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The letter cites recent advances in AI that present “profound risks to society and humanity,” with many experts fearing that humanity is sleepwalking into catastrophe. The signatories call on all AI labs to agree to use the proposed six-month pause to continue safety research and develop shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development.
The letter notes that the signatories are not calling for AI development, in general, to be paused but rather a “stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities.” It ends on a hopeful note, calling for a long “AI summer” and urging society to slow down the development of these systems to let society adapt and accelerate alternative AGI architectures that are safe and formally verifiable by design.
