Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak sign letter urging pause on ‘out-of-control’ AI race. Full text

Some of the biggest names in tech are calling for a pause on training systems more powerful than OpenAI's newly launched model GPT-4. Tesla chief Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque are among the 1,344 signatories on an open letter urging a pause on giant AI experiments.

The letter calls on all AI labs to immediately pause, for at least 6 months, the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4, citing the risk of creating nonhuman minds that could eventually outsmart humans. It also said that AI labs have become locked in an “out-of-control” race to develop “ever more powerful digital minds” that cannot be understood or controlled even by their creators.

“Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,” reads the open letter, posted on the website of Future of Life Institute, a non-profit. “Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?”

You can read the full text of the open letter by clicking on the link below:
“We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4,” reads the letter which comes just two weeks after OpenAI announced GPT-4, adding that safety protocols should be developed, implemented and audited by independent experts.

“This does not mean a pause on AI development in general, merely a stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities,” the letter said.