Experts Propose a Moratorium on the Development of Advanced AI Systems: Is AI a Threat to Humanity?
In recent years, AI technology has advanced at an incredible pace, and some experts believe that machines with human-competitive intelligence pose a significant risk to society and humanity. This concern is supported by extensive research and is acknowledged by top AI labs. In fact, even the widely-endorsed Asilomar AI Principles highlight the need to plan and manage advanced AI with commensurate care and resources.
However, despite the warning signs, recent months have seen AI labs locked in a race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can fully understand, predict or reliably control. Such a situation could have profound implications for our civilization and raises critical questions. Should we allow machines to flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we risk developing nonhuman minds that might eventually outsmart, obsolete and replace us?
The truth is that we cannot delegate such decisions to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable. This confidence must be well justified and increase with the magnitude of a system’s potential effects.
To this end, a group of experts has called on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable and should include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.
The experts propose that during this pause, AI labs and independent experts should jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development. These protocols should ensure that systems adhering to them are safe beyond a reasonable doubt. AI research and development should be refocused on making today’s powerful, state-of-the-art systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal.
Furthermore, AI developers must work with policymakers to dramatically accelerate development of robust AI governance systems. These should include new and capable regulatory authorities dedicated to AI, oversight and tracking of highly capable AI systems and large pools of computational capability, provenance and watermarking systems to help distinguish real from synthetic and to track model leaks, a robust auditing and certification ecosystem, liability for AI-caused harm, robust public funding for technical AI safety research, and well-resourced institutions for coping with the dramatic economic and political disruptions (especially to democracy) that AI will cause.
In summary, the experts believe that humanity can enjoy a flourishing future with AI. Having succeeded in creating powerful AI systems, we can now enjoy an “AI summer” in which we reap the rewards, engineer these systems for the clear benefit of all, and give society a chance to adapt. Society has hit pause on other technologies with potentially catastrophic effects on society. We can do so here. Let’s enjoy a long AI summer, not rush unprepared into a fall.
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