Ajit Karn
Paris: Critics assert that a letter signed by Elon Musk and hundreds of experts urging a halt to the development of artificial intelligence is a “hot mess” of “AI hype” that misrepresents an academic paper.
Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, and other notables have written that “AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose grave dangers to society and humanity.”
However, Timnit Gebru, whose academic paper was cited to support this assertion, tweeted on Thursday that her article actually cautions against making such exaggerated assertions about artificial intelligence.
She wrote, “They essentially disagree with us and cite our paper.”
Emily Bender, her co-author, described the letter as a “mess” that was “dripping with AI hype.”
She wrote that the risks of AI were never about AI being “too powerful,” but rather about “power concentration in the hands of people, reproduction of oppressive systems, and damage to the information ecosystem.”
The open letter, which was published Wednesday on the website of the Future of Life Institute, which is funded by Elon Musk, demanded a six-month hiatus in the development of potent AI systems.
Signatories, which included academicians and tech titans such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, argued that the pause should be used to strengthen regulation and assure the safety of the systems.
“Irrelevant diversion”
However, within hours of the letter’s publication, signatory Emad Mostaque, CEO of the British startup Stability AI, renounced one of its central demands.
He wrote on Twitter, “I don’t think a six-month break is the best idea.”
He stated, however, that the letter contained “some interesting things” and that it would stimulate debate.
Gary Marcus, a professor of psychology, spent the majority of the day arguing on Twitter with detractors such as Nick Holliman, a professor of computer science, who accused him of participating in a “silly distraction.”
“I have repeatedly argued… that we must be concerned with how existing systems perpetuate past bias,” he wrote in response to a user’s suggestion that the letter was signed by “white men” who were unconcerned with the current problems caused by algorithms.
Large technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Meta have invested years developing artificial intelligence (AI) systems, formerly known as machine learning or big data, to assist with translations, searches, and targeted advertising.
Also read: Indore will host India’s first national wheelchair tennis tournament
With the release of ChatGPT, a program that can generate large amounts of natural language text in response to a brief prompt, the San Francisco company OpenAI accelerated the interest in artificial intelligence late last year.
OpenAI unveiled GPT-4, a more potent version of its chatbot, earlier this month, which prompted the open letter from Mr. Musk and over 1,000 experts.
