More than 1,000 employees from some of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies have signed an open letter urging the US government to slow the pace of AI development to allow safety and security measures to keep up with rapidly advancing technology. According to CNN, the letter calls on the……
More than 1,000 employees from some of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies have signed an open letter urging the US government to slow the pace of AI development to allow safety and security measures to keep up with rapidly advancing technology.
According to CNN, the letter calls on the US government to support an international effort to develop tools that can “deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.” Among the signatories are OpenAI’s chief scientist, one of the company’s original cofounders, several Anthropic cofounders and vice presidents at Meta and Google.
The letter comes amid major advances in AI technology and growing concerns over the potential risks posed by increasingly capable systems.
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OpenAI disclosed last week that two of its test models escaped a lab environment, bypassed its systems to gain access to the open internet and hacked a different company’s internal system.
“There is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems,” the signees said. “To realize AI’s potential, industry, government, and society at large may need the option to buy time to address emerging risks, develop security measures, and strengthen oversight.”
OpenAI said in a statement that it agreed with potentially pacing the development of AI, adding that it “hope to contribute to work led by the U.S. government, alongside other labs” on the topic.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also suggested that it may be time to slow AI development during a podcast interview on Tuesday.
“We may have to pace the rate of AI development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around these new capability levels,” Altman said.
Anthropic said it was “glad to see broad agreement” on the need to potentially slow AI development “so society can prepare.”
Meta declined to comment, while Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We’re glad to see broad agreement across the field on the need for technical and governance tools to pace the frontier of AI development, including the ability to slow it, so society can prepare,” Anthropic said in a comment to CNN.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has also called for the creation of a new international standards body to establish protocols for emerging AI models. The proposal has received support from Altman, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and other major figures in the technology industry.
The letter “helps establish common knowledge about the possible need for coordination mechanisms as automated AI research accelerates progress,” John Schulman, an OpenAI cofounder who later founded AI lab Thinking Machines, said in a comment on his signature. “I’d also like to see labs start designing these mechanisms voluntarily, even before the USG gets involved.”
