Elon Musk, along with a number of other leaders in the tech industry have called for an immediate halt to the development of generative artificial intelligence.
In the letter, which was co-signed by Elon Musk and many others in the tech industry, there is a demand for a pause in artificial intelligence research.
Among the other 1,800 signatories was cognitive scientist Gary Marcus and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
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They are calling for a six-month halt on the development of systems “more powerful” than that of GPT-4 - which can solve difficult problems with greater accuracy than previous programmes, thanks to its broader general knowledge and problem-solving abilities.
Engineers from Amazon, DeepMind, Google, Meta, and Microsoft also support the pause concerns about a potential "risk to society".
Developed by OpenAI, a company co-founded by Musk and now backed by Microsoft, GPT-4 has developed the ability to hold human-like conversations, compose songs and summarise lengthy documents.
These AI systems are known to have “human-competitive intelligence” and as a result, could pose "profound risks" to humanity, according to the experts.
The letter warns: "AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity.
"Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable”.
It called for a six-month ban on the further development of this AI amid a "dangerous race" to create systems more powerful than OpenAI's recently launched GPT-4.
If the pause is not brought into effect very quickly, the letter has asked that government officials step in and post a moratorium on the matter.
"AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts," the letter went on to say.
"These protocols should ensure that systems adhering to them are safe beyond a reasonable doubt”.
Musk has in the past been very vocal about his concerns around the development of new AI and its potential to wreak havoc if not handled with care.
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