Tesla Inc. chief executive Elon Musk teamed with fellow tech and artificial intelligence (AI) leaders to pen a letter urging a halt to AI development. Executives who appended their signatures to the letter concurred with the authors that advanced AI has the potential to trigger profound changes to the earth’s history and life.

FOLI Letter Urging Reliable Control Wins Support of Tech Executives

The open letter attracted over 2600 signatories comprising researchers and executives to halt undertaking further AI development. The signatories expressed concern about the nature of the risks it could cause to humanity and society.

The US think tank Future of Life Institute (FOLI) confirmed publishing the open letter on March 22 on behalf of the signatories. The letter challenges the AI companies to cease developing and training AI systems identified as more advanced than the GPT-4 for six months. FOLI expresses concerns that the affinity to human-competitive intelligence could significantly alter society and humanity.

AI-Powered Systems Could Have Dire Consequences on Human Life

The institute outlined that advanced AI would profoundly change life on earth. The think tank alleges that failure to plan and manage the development of human-competitive intelligence would unravel to irreversible consequences. Instead, the management mandates allocating commensurate care besides the resources. FOLI laments that stakeholders today seem unconcerned as the planning and management need to be more present.

The publication of the open letter by FOLI is timely, given the introduction of GPT-4 on March 14. The advanced iteration of OpenAI intelligence-powered chatbot is delivering 90th percentile passmark even in challenging law exams. FOLI considers that the GPT-4 has ten times more advanced capability than the ChatGPT version.

Uncontrolled Race by AI Developers Could Disrupt Employment Sector

Citing the case of GPT, FOLI laments that similar projects aimed at triumphing initial AI capability would trigger an out-of-control race, resulting in powerful AI that creators are unaware of and unable to exercise reliable control.

FOLI’s top concerns involve the capability of machines to flood information channels replacing facts with untruth and propaganda content. Also, the tech executives concurred that failure to pause AI development could gradually cause socioeconomic chaos as it threatens to automate the majority of employment opportunities.

Threats Paused by Human-Competitive Intelligence Towards Eroding Civilization

FOLI conveyed a unique concern challenging the tech executives that the absence of reliable control on human-competitive intelligence would translate to an existential threat given the entrepreneurial efforts portrayed by the AI developers.

The development of nonhuman minds risks eroding today’s civilization if AI outnumbers and outsmarts humans leaving individuals as obsolete. The institute supported the statement conveyed by OpenAI founder Sam Altman that conducting independent reviews is necessary before training future AI systems.

FOLI letter refers to the blog post published by Altman on February 24, warning the world of the emergence of artificial superintelligence (ASI) robots besides artificial general intelligence (AGI).

The letter attracts criticism, with several AI promoters reluctant to sign the petition. SingularityNET chief executive Ben Goertzel in his Wednesday, March 29 response, downplayed the transformation of language learning models into AGIs.

Although Goertzel acknowledged several developments, he informed Gary Marcus of Rebooting.AI that the global need to pause instead research and development oriented towards bioweapons and nukes.

Taming the Vulnerability of AI-Powered Systems from Exploitation and Misuse

On the contrary, the signatories to the petition argue that ChatGPT mirrors language learning models vulnerable to exploitation by bad actors. Citing the cases of video hoaxes and fake images, AI-generated artwork can potentially violate copyright laws.

Galaxy Digital chief executive Mike Novogratz lamented the regulatory attention directed toward crypto. He informed the investors during the March 28 address to the shareholders that the government should instead prioritize AI regulation.

Novogratz supports the FOLI argument urging governments to consider moratoriums to ensure the undertaking of verifiable pause to AI development.