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An open letter in which prominent players such as Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, ask that further development of artificial intelligence (AI) systems be halted first, triggered a fierce reaction.
Timnit Gebru and Emily Bender, whose academic research is wrongly cited in the letter, expressed their displeasure at this.
Gebru wrote on Twitter on Thursday that the article actually warns against making such inflated claims about AI. “The authors of the letter cite us as a source, but they basically say the opposite of what we found.”
Bender thinks the letter is nothing more than a frivolous rant about AI. “The risks of AI have never been about AI being ‘too powerful’, but rather about concentration of power in the hands of humans, about remaking systems of oppression, and about damage to the information ecosystem.”
According to a report on AFP, OpenAi’s launch of GPT-4, an update to ChatGPT, gave rise to the open letter.
The letter was published on Wednesday on the website Future of Life Institute, which is funded by Musk, and it has been signed by more than 1,000 people. Competitors of OpenAI, such as Stability AI’s head, Emad Mostaque, and Canadian AI’s Yoshua Bengio, also added their signatures.
In the letter, experts request that the development of AI systems be halted for six months.
“AI systems with human-rivaling intelligence can pose great risks to society and humanity. It can only be developed further once we are confident that its effects will be positive and risks are manageable,” reads the open letter titled “Pause Giant AI Experiments”.
Bengio warned during a virtual press conference, which was presented in Montreal, that society is not yet ready for such an instrument and its possible abuse.
“Let’s reduce the speed at which development takes place and instead make sure that better security frameworks are developed,” Bengio said.
He requested that a thorough international discussion about AI and its implications take place, just as was done for nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
