You’ve probably heard it by now: the crème de la crème of the tech world have signed a petition calling for a moratorium on AI development.
The petition begins with the statement: “We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” The petition goes on the say, “This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.”
Why the sense of urgency? Because, according to the Asilomar AI Principles, “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.” But, the petition states, “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.”
But a number of tech leaders have dismissed the petition, calling it silly and unworkable. The genie is already out of the bottle, they say. And many tech professionals have a distorted view of their safety from the onslaught of AI. “We have this idea that these tools are amazing and powerful and creative and disruptive and will change the entire economy in the next 10 years, but not my job,” said Kevin Roose, New York Times technology reporter and author of Futureproof. Wishful thinking, Roose called it.
Wishful thinking or not, it does seem unlikely that AI developers will voluntary step back from the most lucrative computer field in recent memory. As for government intervention, we’ve seen how unwilling our Congress has been to pass any meaningful legislation of any kind on any issue.
To learn more, we suggest you read the whole petition for yourself and perhaps think about adding your signature.
To AI developers, we merely ask the question, Have you not read any science fiction?