AI experts disown Elon Musk-backed campaign citing their research

Four synthetic intelligence consultants have expressed concern after their work was cited in an open letter – co-signed by Elon Musk – demanding an pressing pause in analysis.

The letter, dated March 22 and with greater than 1,800 signatures by Friday, referred to as for a six-month circuit-breaker within the improvement of techniques “more powerful” than Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s new GPT-4, which might maintain human-like dialog, compose songs and summarise prolonged paperwork.

Since GPT-4’s predecessor ChatGPT was launched final yr, rival corporations have rushed to launch related merchandise.

The open letter says AI techniques with “human-competitive intelligence” pose profound dangers to humanity, citing 12 items of analysis from consultants together with college lecturers in addition to present and former staff of OpenAI, Google and its subsidiary DeepMind.

Civil society teams within the US and EU have since pressed lawmakers to rein in OpenAI’s analysis. OpenAI didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

Critics have accused the Future of Life Institute (FLI), the organisation behind the letter which is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation, of prioritising imagined apocalyptic eventualities over extra rapid considerations about AI, comparable to racist or sexist biases.

Among the analysis cited was “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots”, a paper co-authored by Margaret Mitchell, who beforehand oversaw moral AI analysis at Google. Mitchell, now chief moral scientist at AI agency Hugging Face, criticised the letter, telling Reuters it was unclear what counted as “more powerful than GPT4”.

“By treating a lot of questionable ideas as a given, the letter asserts a set of priorities and a narrative on AI that benefits the supporters of FLI,” she mentioned. “Ignoring active harms right now is a privilege that some of us don’t have.”

Mitchell and her co-authors — Timnit Gebru, Emily M. Bender, and Angelina McMillan-Major — subsequently revealed a response to the letter, accusing its authors of “fearmongering and AI hype”.

“It is dangerous to distract ourselves with a fantasized AI-enabled utopia or apocalypse which promises either a ‘flourishing’ or ‘potentially catastrophic’ future,” they wrote.

“Accountability properly lies not with the artefacts but with their builders.”

FLI president Max Tegmark informed Reuters the marketing campaign was not an try to hinder OpenAI’s company benefit.

“It’s quite hilarious. I’ve seen people say, ‘Elon Musk is trying to slow down the competition,'” he mentioned, including that Musk had no position in drafting the letter. “This is not about one company.”

Risks now

Shiri Dori-Hacohen, an assistant professor on the University of Connecticut, informed Reuters she agreed with some factors within the letter, however took challenge with the best way by which her work was cited.

She final yr co-authored a analysis paper arguing the widespread use of AI already posed severe dangers.

Her analysis argued the present-day use of AI techniques might affect decision-making in relation to local weather change, nuclear struggle, and different existential threats.

She mentioned: “AI does not need to reach human-level intelligence to exacerbate those risks.

“There are non-existential dangers which can be actually, actually essential, however do not obtain the identical type of Hollywood-level consideration.”

Asked to comment on the criticism, FLI’s Tegmark said both short-term and long-term risks of AI should be taken seriously.

“If we cite somebody, it simply means we declare they’re endorsing that sentence. It does not imply they’re endorsing the letter, or we promote all the pieces they suppose,” he told Reuters.

Dan Hendrycks, director of the California-based Center for AI Safety, who was also cited in the letter, stood by its contents, telling Reuters it was sensible to consider black swan events – those which appear unlikely, but would have devastating consequences.

The open letter also warned that generative AI tools could be used to flood the internet with “propaganda and untruth”.

Dori-Hacohen said it was “fairly wealthy” for Musk to have signed it, citing a reported rise in misinformation on Twitter following his acquisition of the platform, documented by civil society group Common Cause and others.

Musk and Twitter didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.