Elon Musk was one of OpenAI's early supporters. But as the technology evolved, he started to express concerns publicly, worried he had made a mistake.
Now Musk has not only called AI a "profound risk to humanity," but he's added his signature to an open letter penned by the Future of Life Institute, asking AI labs to pause their research into more powerful forms of AI for six months.
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"Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones?" it asks. "Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?"
Several of the researchers whose work was cited in the letter have spoken out since its publication, all of them highly critical of what it posits.
Emily M. Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington and one of the co-authors of the paper "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots," tweeted a long thread that digs into the letter in great detail and addresses each of its claims.
In a follow up blog post to summarize the thread, Bender said, "I mean, I’m glad that the letter authors & signatories are asking 'Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth?' but the questions after that are just unhinged #AIhype, helping those building this stuff sell it."
Margaret Mitchell, chief ethical scientist at AI Firm Hugging Face and also co-author of the aforementioned paper, also criticized the letter.
"By treating a lot of questionable ideas as a given, the letter asserts a set of priorities and a narrative on AI that benefits the supporters of FLI," she said. "Ignoring active harms right now is a privilege that some of us don't have."
