Experts Express Concern Over Demands to Pause AI Research
Four artificial intelligence (AI) experts have expressed concern after their work was cited in an open letter, co-signed by Elon Musk, demanding an urgent pause in AI research. The letter, which had more than 1,800 signatures by Friday, called for a six-month circuit-breaker in the development of systems "more powerful" than OpenAI's new GPT-4, which can hold human-like conversations, compose songs and summarise lengthy documents.
The open letter cites 12 pieces of research from experts including university academics, as well as current and former employees of OpenAI, Google, and its subsidiary DeepMind. Civil society groups in the US and EU have since pressed lawmakers to rein in OpenAI's research. Critics have accused the Future of Life Institute (FLI), the organisation behind the letter, of prioritising imagined apocalyptic scenarios over more immediate concerns about AI, such as racist or sexist biases being programmed into machines.
Among the research cited was "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots", a well-known paper co-authored by Margaret Mitchell, who previously oversaw ethical AI research at Google. Mitchell, now a chief ethical scientist at AI firm Hugging Face, criticised the letter, saying it was unclear what counted as "more powerful than GPT-4". Her co-authors Timnit Gebru and Emily M. Bender also criticised the letter on Twitter, with the latter branding some of its claims "unhinged".
FLI president Max Tegmark told Reuters the campaign was not an attempt to hinder OpenAI's corporate advantage. Shiri Dori-Hacohen, an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut, also took issue with her work being mentioned in the letter. She co-authored a research paper arguing the widespread use of AI already posed serious risks. Her research argued the present-day use of AI systems could influence decision-making in relation to climate change, nuclear war, and other existential threats.
The open letter also warned that generative AI tools could be used to flood the internet with "propaganda and untruth". However, Dori-Hacohen said it was "pretty rich" for Musk to have signed it, citing a reported rise in misinformation on Twitter following his acquisition of the platform.
