Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and more sign letter calling for ‘immediate pause’ of AI training

Twitter CEO and founder of electric car company Tesla, Elon Musk, along with a host of artificial intelligence experts has called for an ‘immediate pause’ in the training of artificial intelligence (AI) systems due to the potential risks to society and humanity.

An open letter, which has been issued by non-profit Future of Life Institute, has been signed by 1,000 people. The letter has warned of the potential risks that AI poses to society and civilisation as we know it.

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 brief six-month halt to the "dangerous race" to develop systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4 which has recently become infamous on the internet since its inception.

The letter also stated: “"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. These protocols should ensure that systems adhering to them are safe beyond a reasonable doubt."

Aside from Musk, other people to sign the letter included Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Yoshua Benigo, who is considered the ‘godfather of AI’ and Stuart Russell, a pioneer of research in the field, as well as researchers at Alphabet-owned DeepMind.