10/23/23, 11:28 AM Elon Musk and others urge AI pause, citing 'risks to society' | Reuters

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Elon Musk and others urge AI pause, citing 'risks to society'

By Jyoti Narayan, Krystal Hu, Martin Coulter and Supantha Mukherjee
April 5, 2023 8:22 PM GMT+8 · Updated 7 months ago

00:00 / 01:35

March 29 (Reuters) - (This March 29 story has been corrected to to show that the Musk Foundation is a major, not the primary donor to
My View Following Saved
FLI, in paragraph 4)

Elon Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives are calling for a six-month pause in developing systems
more powerful than OpenAI's newly launched GPT-4, in an open letter citing potential risks to society.

Earlier this month, Microsoft-backed OpenAI unveiled the fourth iteration of its GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) AI program,
which has wowed users by engaging them in human-like conversation, composing songs and summarising lengthy documents.

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10/23/23, 11:28 AM Elon Musk and others urge AI pause, citing 'risks to society' | Reuters

"Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be
manageable," said the letter issued by the Future of Life Institute.

The Musk Foundation is a major donor to the non-profit, as well as London-based group Founders Pledge, and Silicon Valley Community
Foundation, according to the European Union's transparency register.

"AI stresses me out," Musk said earlier this month. He is one of the co-founders of industry leader OpenAI and his carmaker Tesla
(TSLA.O) uses AI for an autopilot system.

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Musk, who has expressed frustration over regulators critical of efforts to regulate the autopilot system, has sought a regulatory authority
to ensure that development of AI serves the public interest.

"It is ... deeply hypocritical for Elon Musk to sign on given how hard Tesla has fought against accountability for the defective AI in its self-
driving cars," said James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell University.

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"A pause is a good idea, but the letter is vague and doesn't take the regulatory problems seriously."

Tesla last month had to recall more than 362,000 U.S. vehicles to update software after U.S. regulators said the driver assistance system
could cause crashes, prompting Musk to tweet that the word "recall" for an over-the-air software update is "anachronistic and just flat
wrong!"

'OUTNUMBER, OUTSMART, OBSOLETE'

OpenAI didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the open letter, which urged a pause on advanced AI development until
shared safety protocols were developed independent experts and called on developers to work with policymakers on governance.

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10/23/23, 11:28 AM Elon Musk and others urge AI pause, citing 'risks to society' | Reuters

Tesla founder Elon Musk attends Offshore Northern Seas 2022 in Stavanger, Norway August 29, 2022. NTB/Carina Johansen via REUTERS Acquire Licensing Rights

"Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? ... Should we develop nonhuman minds that
might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us?" the letter asked, saying "such decisions must not be delegated to
unelected tech leaders."

The letter was signed by more than 1,000 people including Musk. Sam Altman, chief executive at OpenAI, was not among those who
signed the letter. Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, CEOs of Alphabet and Microsoft, were not among those who signed either.

Co-signatories included Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, researchers at Alphabet-owned DeepMind, and AI heavyweights Yoshua
Bengio, often referred to as one of the "godfathers of AI", and Stuart Russell, a pioneer of research in the field.

The concerns come as ChatGPT attracts U.S. lawmakers' attention with questions about its impact on national security and education.
EU police force Europol warned on Monday about the potential misuse of the system in phishing attempts, disinformation and
cybercrime.

Meanwhile, the UK government unveiled proposals for an "adaptable" regulatory framework around AI.

AI RACE

"The letter isn't perfect, but the spirit is right: we need to slow down until we better understand the ramifications," said Gary Marcus, a
professor at New York University who signed the letter.

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10/23/23, 11:28 AM Elon Musk and others urge AI pause, citing 'risks to society' | Reuters

"The big players are becoming increasingly secretive about what they are doing, which makes it hard for society to defend against
whatever harms may materialize."

Since its release last year, OpenAI's ChatGPT has prompted rivals to accelerate developing similar large language models and
companies including Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) are racing to steep their products in AI.

Investors, wary of relying on a single company, are embracing competitors to OpenAI.

Microsoft declined to comment on the letter and Alphabet did not respond to calls and emails for a comment.

"A lot of the power to develop these systems has been constantly in the hands of few companies that have the resources to do it," said
Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a professor at Brown University and former assistant director in the White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy.

"That's how these models are, they're hard to build and they're hard to democratize."

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Reporting by Jyoti Narayan in Bengaluru, Krystal Hu in New York, Martin Coulter in London, and Supantha Mukhurjee in Stockholm; Additional reporting by
Aditya Soni and Jeffrey Dastin; Writing by Sayantani Ghosh; Editing by Gerry Doyle, Elaine Hardcastle and Deepa Babington

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Krystal Hu
Thomson Reuters

Krystal reports on venture capital and startups for Reuters. She covers Silicon Valley and beyond through
the lens of money and characters, with a focus on growth-stage startups, tech investments and AI. She has
previously covered M&A for Reuters, breaking stories on Trump's SPAC and Elon Musk's Twitter financing.
Previously, she reported on Amazon for Yahoo Finance, and her investigation of the company's retail practice
was cited by lawmakers in Congress. Krystal started a career in journalism by writing about tech and politics
in China. She has a master's degree from New York University, and enjoys a scoop of Matcha ice cream as
much as getting a scoop at work.

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