Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

Last updated

Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter is the title of a letter published by the Future of Life Institute in March 2023. The letter calls "all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4", citing risks such as AI-generated propaganda, extreme automation of jobs, human obsolescence, and a society-wide loss of control. [1] It received more than 20,000 signatures, including academic AI researchers and industry CEOs such as Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and Yuval Noah Harari. [1]

Contents

Motivations

The publication occurred a week after the release of OpenAI's large language model GPT-4. It asserts that current large language models are "becoming human-competitive at general tasks", referencing a paper about early experiments of GPT-4, described as having "Sparks of AGI". [2] AGI is described as posing numerous important risks, especially in a context of race-to-the-bottom dynamics in which some AI labs may be incentivized to overlook security to deploy products more quickly. [3]

It asks to refocus AI research on making powerful AI systems "more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal". The letter also recommends more governmental regulation, independent audits before training AI systems, as well as "tracking highly capable AI systems and large pools of computational capability" and "robust public funding for technical AI safety research". [1] FLI suggests using the "amount of computation that goes into a training run" as a proxy to for how powerful an AI is, and thus as a threshold. [4]

Reception

Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote that the letter "doesn't go far enough" and argued that it should ask for an indefinite pause. He fears that finding a solution to the alignment problem might take several decades and that any misaligned AI sufficiently intelligent might cause human extinction. [5]

The letter has been criticized for diverting attention from more immediate societal risks such as algorithmic biases. [6] The Microsoft CEO Bill Gates chose not to sign the letter, stating that he does not think "asking one particular group to pause solves the challenges". [7]

Some IEEE members have expressed various reasons for signing the letter, such as that "There are too many ways these systems could be abused. They are being freely distributed, and there is no review or regulation in place to prevent harm." [8]

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, commented that the letter was "missing most technical nuance about where we need the pause" and stated that "An earlier version of the letter claimed OpenAI is training GPT-5 right now. We are not and won't for some time." [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that matches or surpasses human capabilities across a wide range of cognitive tasks. This is in contrast to narrow AI, which is designed for specific tasks. AGI is considered one of various definitions of strong AI.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AI takeover</span> Hypothetical outcome of artificial intelligence

An AI takeover is an imagined scenario in which artificial intelligence (AI) emerges as the dominant form of intelligence on Earth and computer programs or robots effectively take control of the planet away from the human species, which relies on human intelligence. Stories of AI takeovers remain popular throughout science fiction, but recent advancements have made the threat more real. Possible scenarios include replacement of the entire human workforce due to automation, takeover by a superintelligent AI (ASI), and the notion of a robot uprising. Some public figures, such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have advocated research into precautionary measures to ensure future superintelligent machines remain under human control.

This is a timeline of artificial intelligence, sometimes alternatively called synthetic intelligence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gary Marcus</span> American cognitive scientist

Gary Fred Marcus is an American psychologist, cognitive scientist, and author, known for his research on the intersection of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence (AI).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam Altman</span> American entrepreneur and investor (born 1985)

Samuel Harris Altman is an American entrepreneur and investor best known as the CEO of OpenAI since 2019. He is also the chairman of clean energy companies Oklo Inc. and Helion Energy. Altman is considered to be one of the leading figures of the AI boom. He dropped out of Stanford University after two years and founded Loopt, a mobile social networking service, raising more than $30 million in venture capital. In 2011, Altman joined Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, and was its president from 2014 to 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Future of Life Institute</span> International nonprofit research institute

The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit organization which aims to steer transformative technology towards benefiting life and away from large-scale risks, with a focus on existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence (AI). FLI's work includes grantmaking, educational outreach, and advocacy within the United Nations, United States government, and European Union institutions.

In January 2015, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and dozens of artificial intelligence experts signed an open letter on artificial intelligence calling for research on the societal impacts of AI. The letter affirmed that society can reap great potential benefits from artificial intelligence, but called for concrete research on how to prevent certain potential "pitfalls": artificial intelligence has the potential to eradicate disease and poverty, but researchers must not create something which is unsafe or uncontrollable. The four-paragraph letter, titled "Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence: An Open Letter", lays out detailed research priorities in an accompanying twelve-page document.

Existential risk from artificial general intelligence refers to the idea that substantial progress in artificial general intelligence (AGI) could lead to human extinction or an irreversible global catastrophe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenAI</span> Artificial intelligence research organization

OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research organization founded in December 2015, researching artificial intelligence with the goal of developing "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence, which it defines as "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work." As one of the leading organizations of the AI boom, it has developed several large language models, advanced image generation models, and previously, released open-source models. Its release of ChatGPT has been credited with starting the AI boom.

In the field of artificial intelligence (AI), AI alignment research aims to steer AI systems toward a person's or group's intended goals, preferences, and ethical principles. An AI system is considered aligned if it advances its intended objectives. A misaligned AI system may pursue some objectives, but not the intended ones.

Regulation of algorithms, or algorithmic regulation, is the creation of laws, rules and public sector policies for promotion and regulation of algorithms, particularly in artificial intelligence and machine learning. For the subset of AI algorithms, the term regulation of artificial intelligence is used. The regulatory and policy landscape for artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging issue in jurisdictions globally, including in the European Union. Regulation of AI is considered necessary to both encourage AI and manage associated risks, but challenging. Another emerging topic is the regulation of blockchain algorithms and is mentioned along with regulation of AI algorithms. Many countries have enacted regulations of high frequency trades, which is shifting due to technological progress into the realm of AI algorithms.

The regulation of artificial intelligence refers to the development of public sector policies and laws for promoting and regulating artificial intelligence (AI). It is part of the broader regulation of algorithms. The regulatory and policy landscape for AI is an emerging issue in jurisdictions worldwide, including for international organizations without direct enforcement power like the IEEE or the OECD.

Sébastien Bubeck is a French-American computer scientist and mathematician. He is currently Microsoft's Vice President of GenAI and leads the Machine Learning Foundations group at Microsoft Research Redmond. Bubeck was formerly professor at Princeton University and a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his contributions to online learning, optimization and more recently studying deep neural networks, and in particular transformer models.

Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) is a multimodal large language model created by OpenAI, and the fourth in its series of GPT foundation models. It was launched on March 14, 2023, and made publicly available via the paid chatbot product ChatGPT Plus, via OpenAI's API, and via the free chatbot Microsoft Copilot. As a transformer-based model, GPT-4 uses a paradigm where pre-training using both public data and "data licensed from third-party providers" is used to predict the next token. After this step, the model was then fine-tuned with reinforcement learning feedback from humans and AI for human alignment and policy compliance.

xAI (company) Artificial Intelligence focused startup

X.AI Corp., doing business as xAI, is an American startup company working in the area of artificial intelligence (AI). Founded by Elon Musk in March 2023, its stated goal is "to understand the true nature of the universe".

The Artificial Intelligence Insight forums, also known as the A.I. Insight forums, are a series of forums to build consensus on how the United States Congress should craft A.I. legislation. Organized by Senate Majority Leader Charles "Chuck" Schumer, the first of nine closed-door forums convened on September 13.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grok (chatbot)</span> Chatbot developed by xAI

Grok is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI. Based on a large language model (LLM), it was developed as an initiative by Elon Musk in a direct response to the meteoric rise of ChatGPT, the developer of which, OpenAI, Musk co-founded. The chatbot is advertised as "having a sense of humor" and direct access to X. It is currently under beta testing and is available with X Premium.

The AI era, also known as the AI revolution, is the anticipated period of global transition of the human economy and society towards post-scarcity economics and post-labor society through automation, enabled by the integration of AI technology. Many have suggested that this period started around the early 2020s, with the release of generative AI models, including large language models such as ChatGPT.

PauseAI is a global political movement founded in the Netherlands with the stated aim of achieving global coordination to stop the development of artificial intelligence systems more powerful than GPT-4, at least until it is known how to build them safely, and keep them under democratic control. The movement was established in Utrecht in May 2023 by software entrepreneur Joep Meindertsma.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter". Future of Life Institute. Retrieved 2023-04-13.
  2. ↑ Bubeck, Sébastien; Chandrasekaran, Varun; Eldan, Ronen; Gehrke, Johannes; Horvitz, Eric; Kamar, Ece; Lee, Peter; Lee, Yin Tat; Li, Yuanzhi; Lundberg, Scott; Nori, Harsha; Palangi, Hamid; Ribeiro, Marco Tulio; Zhang, Yi (2023-04-12). "Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4". arXiv: 2303.12712 [cs.CL].
  3. ↑ "MPs warned of AI arms race to the bottom | Computer Weekly". ComputerWeekly.com. Retrieved 2023-04-13.
  4. ↑ Support (2023-03-31). "FAQs about FLI's Open Letter Calling for a Pause on Giant AI Experiments". Future of Life Institute. Retrieved 2023-04-13.
  5. ↑ "The Open Letter on AI Doesn't Go Far Enough". Time. 2023-03-29. Retrieved 2023-04-13.
  6. ↑ Paul, Kari (2023-04-01). "Letter signed by Elon Musk demanding AI research pause sparks controversy". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2023-04-14.
  7. ↑ Rigby, Jennifer (2023-04-04). "Bill Gates says calls to pause AI won't 'solve challenges'". Reuters. Retrieved 2023-04-13.
  8. ↑ "'AI Pause' Open Letter Stokes Fear and Controversy - IEEE Spectrum". spectrum.ieee.org. Retrieved 2023-04-13.
  9. ↑ Vincent, James (April 14, 2023). "OpenAI's CEO confirms the company isn't training GPT-5 and 'won't for some time'". The Verge.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.