Elon Musk Is Right: We Need to Regulate AI Now

We need to do something about artificial intelligence before it's too late.

You probably heard some variation of that statement dozens of times in the years before ChatGPT. You've probably heard it a hundred times in the months since ChatGPT. 

Something needs to be done about AI or else. If the development of artificial intelligence continues at its current pace, the worry goes, catastrophe is likely to follow. Be it a tsunami of misinformation, millions of jobs lost or the apocalypse itself, the AI revolution carries enormous risks. 

In March an open letter called for all labs to pause development on AI for six months, during which time the government could work on sensible regulation. It was signed by Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and, among other tech and academic luminaries, Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the book Sapiens.  

"Over the past couple of years, new AI tools have emerged that threaten the survival of human civilization," Harari wrote last month. "AI has gained some remarkable abilities to manipulate and generate language … AI has thereby hacked the operating system of our civilization."