Elon Musk and experts want a break in the development of artificial intelligence

The signatories of the appeal fear that these increasingly sophisticated programs could represent "major risks to humanity". Pixabay

Text by: Dominique Desaunay Follow

2 min

Elon Musk and hundreds of digital experts around the world signed a call on Wednesday, March 29, asking for a six-month pause in the research and development of artificial intelligence programs. The signatories' fear is that these increasingly sophisticated programs could represent "major risks to humanity".

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The future of humanity would henceforth be intimately linked to the future development of artificial intelligence programs. That's according to digital scientists, business leaders and Internet users who voiced their concerns in an open letter published on the Future of Life Institute website. The American organization, since 2015, studies from every angle "the risks of the development of a human-level artificial intelligence" that would exceed our cognitive abilities and would be able to replace us regardless of our field of activity.

Elon Musk leads AI slingers

The new boss of Twitter, Elon Musk, has managed to gather under his banner more than 1,200 signatories. They are calling for a six-month moratorium until AI device security systems are in place, a regulatory framework dedicated to its use, an audit of existing systems and the creation of technical countermeasures to help institutions and states manage "economic and political crises with dramatic consequences that AI could soon cause."

Far from rejecting all the demands that have been expressed, Jacques Moulin, director general of the DigiWorld Institute, believes that banning research around these programs would be counterproductive. This European think tank, which brings together many personalities from the industrial, economic, political and scientific worlds, defends a humanist vision of digital technology with the training of young users in the proper use of these technologies on school benches.

► Read also: Twitter: "The real project of Elon Musk is political"

Creating a "stronger" AI than ChatGPT 4

The fears of the signatories focus on the development of an AI that would be "stronger" than ChatGPT 4, the new OpenAI device, launched in mid-March. And among the petitioners we note Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, members of Google's AI lab DeepMind, as well as American and French academics. But also engineers from Microsoft, which has nevertheless integrated into its consumer software the programs of the Californian start-up OpenAI.

All believe that AI developments are too fast and present serious risks for Western democracies, especially with the automatic generation of very elaborate fake news that will no longer allow us to distinguish the true from the false.

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  • Artificial intelligence
  • Elon Musk
  • Human rights
  • Freedom of the press
  • Internet
  • Social Media
  • New technologies