There were some rather large protests taking place in London in recent weeks highlighting the current conflict in Gaza. So you could be forgiven for missing the rather smaller “Pause AI” protest.
What are they protesting about?
They are highlighting the present and future risks of AI; fake media, bias, economic instability, weapons, hacking and an existential risk.
What are they asking for?
They’re asking for a complete pause on training AI systems beyond GPT-4. Not indefinitely, but until such a time as safeguards and global standards can be put in place – before these systems are created. They’ve layed out their proposal here – even a step such as enforcing copyright in training LLMs could help to bring about a natural pause.
Various groups have been commissioning surveys to support their proposals; in the UK it’s reported that 74% of the public want to slow down the progress on AI.
Would a ‘pause’ work, or is the ‘genie out of the bottle’? Is there any hope of getting global agreement on these issues? Will the upcoming Bletchley AI Summit make any progess on these questions?