Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter is the title of a letter published by the Future of Life Institute in March 2023. The letter calls "all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4", citing risks such as AI-generated propaganda, extreme automation of jobs, human obsolescence, and a society-wide loss of control. It received more than 30,000 signatures, including academic AI researchers and industry CEOs such as Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and Yuval Noah Harari.
In the era before the dawn of new technologies, mankind advanced at an accelerated pace. Now, technology follows suit, driven by the same innate impulse toward progress. Why? Because it is in the very nature of intelligent beings to advance—first in their intelligence, and consequently in all...