The verge reports that A number of well-known AI researchers — and Elon Musk — have signed an open letter calling on AI labs around the world to pause development of large-scale AI systems, citing fears over the “profound risks to society and humanity” they claim this software poses.
The letter, published by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, notes that AI labs are currently locked in an “out-of-control race” to develop and deploy machine learning systems “that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict, or reliably control.”
“Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4,” says the letter. “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.”
Signatories include author Yuval Noah Harari, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, politician Andrew Yang, and a number of well-known AI researchers and CEOs, including Stuart Russell, Yoshua Bengio, Gary Marcus, and Emad Mostaque.
AI research is moving at such a pace that we need to either regulate it or learn how to defend against it’s products before they get out of control. The answer not only lies in pausing the rapid growth but in adopting the correct regulation and working together in aligning the future. To regulate AI, data quality must be regulated at the earliest stages, but problems could arise when different counties and regions adopt different policies. Deepfakes, for example, are a major cybersecurity threat and require attention, but regulation will be difficult to implement globally, and therefore awareness and education remain key.
More education and technology countermeasures will be required as cybercriminals are cleverly using these new techniques to attack people and businesses. With AI-powered phishing bound to grow in number and quality and deep learning autonomously generating quality fakes, we will soon require more forms of multilayered security to pass even the most trivial of transactions to prove identity.
ESET Ireland 