Elon Musk wants to stop artificial intelligence

In an open letter published by the Future of Life Institute and reported by the Financial Times, Elon Musk and 1,000 other Silicon Valley leaders called for a «halt to the development of artificial intelligence». As Il Sole 24 Ore reports, the Twitter CEO and 1.000 researchers and executives, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Andrew Yang, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, are calling for a six-month "pause" in the development of advanced artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT to stop what they call a "dangerous" arms race.

«In recent months, artificial intelligence labs have lost control over the development of powerful digital minds that no one, not even the developers, can understand, predict and control. (...) We call on all artificial intelligence labs to immediately pause the training of the most powerful AI systems like GPT-4 for at least six months. The pause should be public, verifiable, and inclusive. If it is not implemented quickly, governments should intervene and impose a moratorium» the letter says. «Artificial intelligence systems can pose serious risks to society and humanity» the appeal continues. According to Musk and others, rules are needed to oversee the development of the technology, otherwise we risk «losing control of our civilization». "Generative AI will impact 300 million jobs in major economies" headlined an article from FT a few days ago, inserting itself into a debate that affected everything from fashion, artificial intelligence-generated covers for Vogue Brazil and Singapore, to the banning of ChatGPT as co-author of scientific articles and analytical tools for banks.

It's a discussion that touches Musk and Twitter personally, considering that social media is one of the preferred platforms for spreading deep fake. From the innocuous images of Pope Francis in a white Puffer created with Midjourney to the fake photos of Trump's arrest, declaring content untruthful from the outset makes it easy to circumvent censorship guidelines. Higgins himself (the creator of the images showing the former president in handcuffs) announced this from the start: «I am taking pictures of Trump's arrest in anticipation of Trump's arrest», thus circumventing Twitter's algorithm, which would never have allowed the dissemination of such violent images if they had not been declared false from the start. It remains to be seen whether the call from the Silicon Valley tech gurus will be taken as a prediction of the near future or fade into the background as just another fatalistic statement about the future of technology.