In this petition published on the futureoflife.org website, they call for a moratorium until the implementation of security systems, including new dedicated regulatory authorities, monitoring of AI systems, techniques to help distinguish the real from the artificial and institutions capable of managing the "dramatic economic and political disruption (especially for democracy) that AI will cause".
The petition brings together personalities who have already publicly expressed their fears about uncontrollable AIs that would surpass humans, including Elon Musk, owner of Twitter and founder of SpaceX and Tesla, and Yuval Noah Harari, the author of "Sapiens".
The boss of OpenAI, designer of chatGPT, Sam Altman himself admitted to being "a little scared" by its creation if it was used for "large-scale disinformation or cyberattacks". "Society needs time to adapt," he told ABCNews in mid-March.
"Recent months have seen AI labs lock themselves into an uncontrolled race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital brains that no one – not even their creators – can reliably understand, predict or control," they said.
"Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and lies? Should we automate all jobs, including those that are rewarding? Should we develop non-human minds that could one day be more numerous, smarter, more obsolete and replace us? Should we risk losing control of our civilization? These decisions should not be delegated to unelected technology leaders," they conclude.
The signatories also include Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, members of Google's AI lab DeepMind, Stability AI boss Emad Mostaque, OpenAI's competitor, as well as American AI experts and academics, senior engineers from Microsoft, an OpenAI ally.
© 2023 AFP