Elon Musk and 1,000 other technology leaders including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak are calling for a pause on the ‘dangerous race’ to develop AI, which they fear poses a ‘profound risk to society and humanity’ and could have ‘catastrophic’ effects.
In an open letter on The Future of Life Institute, Musk and the others argued that humankind doesn’t yet know the full scope of the risk involved in advancing the technology.
They are asking all AI labs to stop developing their products for at least six months while more risk assessment is done.
If any labs refuse, they want governments to ‘step in’. Musk’s fear is that the technology will become so advanced, that it will no longer require – or listen to – human interference.
It is a fear that is widely held and even acknowledged by the CEO of AI – the company that created ChatGPT – who said earlier this month that the tech could be developed and harnessed to commit ‘widespread’ cyberattacks.
In an open letter on The Future of Life organization, Musk and the others argued that humankind doesn’t yet know the full scope of the risk involved in advancing the technology
Musk, Wozniak and other tech leaders are among the 1,120 people who have signed the open letter calling for an industry-wide pause on the current ‘dangerous race’
Elon Musk’s hatred of AI explained: Billionaire believes it will spell the end of humans – a fear Stephen Hawking shared
Elon Musk wants to push technology to its absolute limit, from space travel to self-driving cars — but he draws the line at artificial intelligence.
The billionaire first shared his distaste for AI in 2014, calling it humanity’s ‘biggest existential threat’ and comparing it to ‘summoning the demon.’
At the time, Musk also revealed he was investing in AI companies not to make money but to keep an eye on the technology in case it gets out of hand.
His main fear is that in the wrong hands, if AI becomes advanced, it could overtake humans and spell the end of mankind, which is known as singularity.
That concern is shared among many brilliant minds, including the late Stephen Hawking, who told BBC in 2014: ‘The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.
‘It would take off on its own and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate.’
AI Despite his fear of AI, Musk has invested in San Francisco-based AI group Vicarious, DeepMind, which has since been acquired by Google and OpenAI, creating the popular ChatGPT program that has taken the world by storm in recent months.
During a 2016 interview, Musk noted that he and the OpenAI created the company to ‘have democratization of AI technology to make it widely available.’
Musk founded OpenAI with Sam Altman, the company’s CEO, but in 2018 the billionaire attempted to take control of the startup.
His request was rejected, forcing him to quit OpenAI and move on with his other projects.
OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November, which became an instant success worldwide.
The chatbot is a large language model trained on a massive amount of text data, allowing it to generate eerily human-like text in response to a given prompt.
ChatGPT is used to write research papers, books, news articles, emails and more.
And while Altman is basking in its glory, Musk is attacking ChatGPT from all ends.
He says the AI is ‘woke’ and deviates from OpenAI’s original non-profit mission.
‘OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it ‘Open’ AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft, Musk tweeted in February.
Although it may seem OpenAI is on Musk’s target list, the billionaire is still concerned about AI reaching the singularity.
The word ‘singularity’ is making waves worldwide as artificial intelligence advances in ways only seen in science fiction – but what does it actually mean?
In simple terms, singularity describes a hypothetical future where technology surpasses human intelligence and changes the path of our evolution.
Experts have said that once AI reaches this point, it will be able to innovate much faster than humans.
There are two ways the advancement could play out, with the first leading to humans and machines working together to create a world better suited for humanity.
For example, humans could scan their consciousness and store it in a computer where they will live forever.
The second scenario is that AI becomes more powerful than humans, taking control and making humans its slaves – but if this is true, it is far off in the distant future.
Researchers are now looking for signs of AI reaching singularity, such as the technology’s ability to translate speech with the accuracy of a human and perform tasks faster.
Former Google engineer Ray Kurzweil predicts singularity will be reached by 2045.
He has made 147 predictions about technology advancements since the early 1990s and 86 percent have been correct.
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They say AI labs are currently ‘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.’
‘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 said.
No one from Google or Microsoft – who are considered to be at the forefront of developing the technology – has signed on.
The list of signatories is also missing input from social media bosses or those who run Quora or Reddit, who are widely considered to have knowledge on the topic too.
Earlier this week, Musk said Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ understanding of the technology was ‘limited’.
The letter also detailed potential risks to society and civilization by human-competitive AI systems in the form of economic and political disruptions, and called on developers to work with policymakers on governance and regulatory authorities.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who did not sign the letter, says people should be happy they are ‘a little bit scared’ of the technology
The letter comes as EU police force Europol on Monday joined a chorus of ethical and legal concerns over advanced AI like ChatGPT, warning about the potential misuse of the system in phishing attempts, disinformation and cybercrime.
Since its release last year, Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT has prompted rivals to launch similar products, and companies to integrate it or similar technologies into their apps and products.
Musk has been trying to stop – or at least stunt – the rapid growth of AI technology for years.
In 2017, Musk warned that humanity was ‘summoning the demon’ in its pursuit of the technology.
‘With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.
‘You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he’s like, yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out,’ he said in an article for Vanity Fair.
Musk was one of the founders of OpenAI – the company that created ChatGPT – in 2015.
His intention was for it to run as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to researching the dangers AI may pose to society.
It’s reported that he feared the research was falling behind Google, and that Musk wanted to buy the company. He was turned down.
Now, its CEO Sam Altman – who has not signed on to Musk’s letter – says he is ‘openly attacking’ AI.
‘Elon is obviously attacking us some on Twitter right now on a few different vectors.
‘I believe he is, understandably so, really stressed about AGI safety,’ he said.
Altman says he is open to ‘feedback’ about GPT and wants to better understand the risks. In a podcast interview on Monday, he told Lex Friedman: ‘There will be harm caused by this tool.
‘There will be harm, and there’ll be tremendous benefits.
‘Tools do wonderful good and real bad. And we will minimize the bad and maximize the good.’
In an interview earlier this month, he said people had a right to be ‘a little bit scared’, and that he was too.
‘We’ve got to be careful here. I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this.
‘I’m particularly worried that these models could be used for large-scale disinformation. Now that they’re getting better at writing computer code, [they] could be used for offensive cyberattacks,’ he said.
