A letter co-signed by Elon Musk and thousands of others, including notable names like Gary Marcus and Steve Wozniak, called for a six-month pause on the development of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. The letter created a firestorm when it was discovered that some signatures were fake, and researchers cited in the letter condemned its use of their work.
GPT-4’s Human-Like Capabilities Raise Concerns GPT-4, developed by OpenAI, can hold human-like conversations, compose poems, and summarize lengthy documents. The letter claimed that AI systems with such “human-competitive intelligence” pose profound risks to humanity and called for a shared set of safety protocols to be developed and overseen by independent experts.
Researchers Criticize Use of Their Work in Letter Four researchers cited in the letter expressed concern that their work was used to support its claims. Among them is Margaret Mitchell, who co-authored the well-known paper “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots.” Mitchell and her co-authors, Timnit Gebru and Emily M Bender, criticized the letter on Twitter, with Bender calling some of its claims “unhinged.”
Future of Life Institute Accused of Prioritizing Apocalyptic Scenarios Critics accused the Future of Life Institute (FLI), the thinktank that coordinated the effort and is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation, of focusing on imagined apocalyptic scenarios instead of addressing more immediate AI concerns like racist or sexist biases being programmed into machines.
FLI President Responds to Criticism In response to the criticism, FLI President Max Tegmark said that both short-term and long-term risks of AI should be taken seriously, adding that citing someone’s work doesn’t necessarily mean they endorse the letter or agree with everything the institute believes.
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