Tech Experts, Including Elon Musk, Call for Pause on AI Development

A group of tech and civic leaders signed an open letter calling for a pause on training powerful AI systems for at least six months. The letter’s 1,000+ signatories included Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Andrew Yang, and more. 

Key Quotes: “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” the letter states, adding, “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. 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.” The letter was published on the nonprofit Future of Life Institute’s website. 

For Context: AI models are becoming increasingly complex, and the past year saw substantial high-profile advances, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. OpenAI released the latest version, GPT-4, on March 13. Google’s competing chatbot, Bard, was released to the public a week later. Baidu's Ernie Bot and Microsoft's AI-powered Bing have also made waves. Elon Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI and previously served as its CEO, but he left the company's board in 2018 and is no longer formally involved. 

How the Media Covered It: Coverage was common and generally similar across the spectrum, with almost every headline featuring Musk’s name.