The world is watching and waiting to learn whether OpenAI (Sam Altman) will respond to the tech lobby’s appeal halt or at least slow down the development of generative AI. Isn't this a bit absurd?  I mean, can you imagine Henry Ford or Bill Gates or Robert Oppenheimer or Valemir Putin or Donald Trump responding to global angst that their enterprise was potentially “hurtful”.  Our webinars have focused on conflict, freedom, expression, and now we have one - a BIG one.  OpenAI’s competitors are jumping on the market leader to slow down. While it is clear that safeguards against misuse of generative Ai as a tool are called for, could it be that Open AI's primary competitors really just want time to catch up?  I can hardly wait for today’s webinar.  Please ask ChatGPT and Bing and Bard and Elliott, for guidance. Get ready to weigh in as our interest in Alternative Dispute Resolution may be tested.- Editor@KEInetwork.net

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AN open letter signed by hundreds of prominent artificial intelligence experts, tech entrepreneurs, and scientists calls for a pause on the development and testing of AI technologies more powerful than OpenAI’s language model GPT-4 so that the risks it may pose can be properly studied.

It warns that language models like GPT-4 can already compete with humans at a growing range of tasks and could be used to automate jobs and spread misinformation. The letter also raises the distant prospect of AI systems that could replace humans and remake civilization. 

“We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 (including the currently-being-trained GPT-5),” states the letter, whose signatories include Yoshua Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal considered a pioneer of modern AI, historian Yuval Noah Harari, Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn, and Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

The letter, which was written by the Future of Life Institute, an organization focused on technological risks to humanity, adds that the pause should be “public and verifiable,” and should involve all those working on advanced AI models like GPT-4. It does not suggest how a halt on development could be verified, but adds that “if such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium,” something that seems unlikely to happen within six months.

Microsoft and Google did not respond to requests for comment on the letter. The signatories seemingly include people from numerous tech companies that are building advanced language models, including Microsoft and Google. Hannah Wong, a spokesperson for OpenAI, says the company spent more than six months working on the safety and alignment of GPT-4 after training the model. She adds that OpenAI is not currently training GPT-5.