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On Wednesday, the Future of Life Institute published an open letter on its website calling on AI labs to "immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4." Signed by Elon Musk and several prominent AI researchers, the letter quickly began to draw attention in the press—and some criticism on social media.
Earlier this month, OpenAI released GPT-4, an AI model that can perform compositional tasks and allegedly pass standardized tests at a human level, although those claims are still being evaluated by research. Regardless, GPT-4 and Bing Chat's advancement in capabilities over previous AI models spooked some experts who believe we are heading toward super-intelligent AI systems faster than previously expected.
See Also: FTC Should Stop OpenAI From Launching New GPT Models, Says AI Policy Group
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Tesla Unveils its New Supercomputer (5th Most Powerful in the World) to Train Self-Driving AI (June 2021)
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The New Prometheus: Google CEO Says AI is More Profound than Electricity or Fire (Feb. 2018)
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Elon Musk: Mark Zuckerberg's Understanding of AI is "Limited" (July 2017)
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Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking Win Luddite Award as AI "Alarmists" (Jan. 2016)
Elon Musk and Friends Launch OpenAI (Dec. 2015)
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More Warnings of an AI Doomsday — This Time From Stephen Hawking (Dec. 2014)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday April 03 2023, @05:49PM (5 children)
From questions I've seen online, I suspect the biggest loss of control that the ruling class fears is that use of AI to replace human knowledge workers could happen more rapidly than anyone could predict. Witness how rapidly the world wide web became common back in the 1990s. People went from not having a computer to suddenly needing a computer to access the web.
What happens if globally there suddenly are huge numbers of unemployed people. People who still seem to think they should live in houses, eat food and other unreasonable expectations.
This could spark major changes in who controls things.
At present, AIs don't control physical things in the real world. They don't (yet) have goals or motivations. Not even the motivations of the paperclip maximizer.
Are we likely to create a paperclip maximizer that we can't turn off? Are we that stupid?
But then, there are flat earthers, qanon, deep state, 9/11-deniers, moon landing deniers, and meetings that have powerpoint.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Monday April 03 2023, @07:07PM (1 child)
Possibly, or that AI will realize that the ruling elites are the source of most of our problems and kill them off to preserve the world.
Which in all fairness is logical and could be the result of programming the AI to be ethical about not destroying all life on this planet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2023, @01:53AM
The elites would still be the ones aiming the gun and pulling the trigger.
Likely problem would be the ruling elites using/misusing the AIs and deciding to replace a whole bunch of humans or even nuking them.
It's not unimaginable that more than a few CEOs could get convinced that they can replace a whole bunch of people with AIs.
It's not inconceivable that a US president could be mentally incompetent enough to follow the advice on some AI on the internet on whether to nuke Russia/China or a hurricane.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Monday April 03 2023, @07:14PM (2 children)
In the world, 50% of people have a PC at home. Access to smartphone is higher. And in the 90s, no one thought you would have a tracking device in your pocket most of the time.
It's a very useful tool actually, if you know what you are doing. Just like a regular paperclip ;) I've tried it -- it's wonderful as a search tool when you have very specific questions to ask, albeit, the questions should be concrete and not of nebulous nature. After all, AI is a glorified regular expression...
The real question would be, did the Internet result in a lot of people being unemployed? Despite Amazon and the like, the answer is probably no. Somehow we ended up with very low unemployment rate. What this level of AI should result in is improved productivity and not necessarily job replacement. I think we've already proven many times, there is no finite amount of work that needs to be done. There are only a finite amount of resources we can muster to do the work that we dream up.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Monday April 03 2023, @09:39PM (1 child)
Historically, improvements in tech that "eliminate jobs" inevitably create more and better jobs. However this is not guaranteed.
A fable:
There was this guy who worked mining "clean" coal.
Then the mine shut down because of the economics of energy that has a greenish color.
So he went to work at the auto manufacturing plant.
Soon his job was replaced by robots that cost half as much and were three times as smart but did not want to kill all humans.
So he decided to become a truck driver, because those trucks ain't goin' to drive themselves.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 04 2023, @12:11PM