Elon Musk’s Little A.I. Prank
So, Elon Musk “accidentally”rallied the tech world behind a pause on artificial intelligence (A.I.) development, and now he’s acting all surprised, like he just pulled off the best prank in tech history.
Back in March, Musk joined hundreds of other tech luminaries in signing an open letter warning of the dangers of advanced A.I. But at the Vivatech technology conference in France, he revealed that he never thought anyone would actually take it seriously.
“I didn’t think anyone would actually agree to the pause, but I thought, for the record I just want to say, ‘I think we should pause,’” said the Tesla CEO.
The A.I. Apocalypse That Wasn’t
Not everyone was in on the joke, apparently. Signatories and critics alike treated the letter as a genuine call to arms, warning of dire consequences for humanity from advanced A.I. and asking for a six-month pause on development of anything more advanced than OpenAI’s GPT-4 chatbot.
Among the concerned were Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, U.S. senator Mike Rounds, and even Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of A.I.,”who left Google this year to warn humanity about the technology he helped advance.
No, Seriously, Let’s Talk About A.I.
Some argue that pausing A.I. development is a moot point, as research will simply continue elsewhere, like in China. Google CEO Sundar Pichai called it a “collective action problem”on the Hard Fork podcast in March, suggesting that the letter’s authors intended it as a conversation starter.
Aidan Gomez, CEO of the $2 billion A.I. startup Cohere, told the Financial Times that the call was “not plausibly implementable,”adding, “To spend all of our time debating whether our species is going to go…”
Well played, Musk. You got us talking about the future of A.I. and our collective responsibility. Now, let’s get back to work on those self-driving cars, shall we?
