Here There Be (AI) Monsters

As Artificial Intelligence grows beyond the known map, Captain Ahab is running from the Great White Whale.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash.

“Pause Giant AI Experiments,” begged signers of an open letter penned recently by a growing group of AI-alarmed scientists, researchers, and programmers. “We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”

With 2,566 distinguished signatories, including such illustrious Silicon Valley royalty as Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, and Andrew Yang, the letter reads like a primal scream of fear and fury.

The plea was well-meaning, idealistic, and unlikely to do a bit of good.

It was full of such obvious conundrums and ludicrous assumptions as “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” and, “If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.”

First of all, when on earth has the development of any technology in human history ever been undertaken only after “we” are, “confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable”?

Inventors of the atomic bomb — including Oppenheimer — thought the explosion might be enough to ignite all the hydrogen…