More than 12,000 people have signed an open letter calling for a pause in the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
The document has a total of about 50,000 signatures, but only about a quarter have been authenticated thus far.
The initiative comes from the Future of Life Institute, a US organisation that warns of the risks associated with new technologies and the possible disasters they could generate. Initiators include Skype founder Jaan Tallinn. He signed the open letter, as did Tesla boss Elon Musk.
The signatories call on developers of artificial intelligence systems not to design, for at least six months, programmes that are more powerful than GPT-4, the latest version of the software on which ChatGPT is based. GTP-4 was launched in mid-March.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT conversational robot uses information available online to provide detailed answers to Internet users’ queries.
Apple founder Steve Wozniak has also added his signature to the letter, as has author Yuval Noah Harari and several leading scientists, some of whom are behind the development of artificial intelligence, such as Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell.
“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 says.
The authors say they are not opposed to the development of AI in general, but recommend taking a step back from the dangerous rush towards even more unpredictable models with extended capabilities.
Artificial intelligence research and development should be refocused on designing systems that are powerful, but more accurate, secure, transparent, reliable and fair, they recommend.
