American billionaire Elon Musk and a group of experts working in the field of artificial intelligence have called for stopping the training of powerful artificial intelligence systems, citing their potential risks to society and humanity.
The letter, issued by the non-profit Future Of Life Institute and signed by more than 1,000 people, warned of potential risks to society that AI systems might cause, in the form of economic and political upheaval.
“Artificial intelligence systems with competitive human intelligence can pose significant risks to society and humanity,” the letter reads. “Strong AI systems should only be developed once we are confident that their effects will be positive, and their risks manageable.”
The letter stressed stopping the “dangerous race” to develop systems more powerful than OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4.
The letter concluded by saying, “AI Labs and independent experts should use this pause to develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols to design and develop advanced AI that can be precisely managed and supervised by independent experts.
These protocols must ensure that the systems they adhere to are secure beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Musk’s warning came following Europol, the European law enforcement agency, on Monday warned of the misuse of artificial intelligence systems in spreading disinformation and cybercrime.
The UK government has also unveiled proposals for an adaptive regulatory framework around AI.