By John Villasenor
In late March, the Future of Life Institute released an open letter (and a related FAQ) calling “on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.” The letter, which also stated that “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” was initially signed by over a thousand people, including many notable technology leaders. Many thousands more added their signatures after its publication.
Individual companies and universities have a right to decide whether, and at what pace, they will do work on artificial intelligence (AI). But a government moratorium in the United States on training powerful AI systems would raise a host of concerns, including the following:
Delaying the Benefits of AI
It’s already clear that AI will bring benefits to drug development, medical diagnosis, climate modeling and weather forecasting, education, and many other areas. In addition, as is often…
