Elon Musk urges AI developers to ‘stop immediately’

What scared the monsters of high technology so much and should programmers really cool their ardor and wait for what the scientific community will come to? We talked about this with high-tech specialists in Russia.

Let’s go over the letter itself, published on the website of the non-profit institute Future of Life Institute.

Its authors, industry experts and company executives, called on programmers around the world to “pause” all the latest developments in machine intelligence more complex than the fourth version of ChatGPT. Recall that this chat bot was presented by OpenAI (one of its founders is Elon Musk) at the end of last year, and it made a real explosion in society, which, on the one hand, perceived the emergence of artificial intelligence with delight, on the other hand, it was wary. In particular, ChatGPT “thundered” in Russia after RSUH student Alexander Zhadan did not want to write his thesis on his own, but entrusted it to a chat bot, and, most interestingly, the university accepted this work!

Help “MK”. ChatGPT is a chatbot with artificial intelligence that can work in a conversational mode. According to the creators, the program is able to solve absolutely any task in English: write a text on the topic entered, analyze any problem, etc.

What tasks have not been set over the past three months by users of the free platform, which is currently in testing mode! Artificial intelligence was given the task of writing articles, scientific papers, on March 14, a version of the chatbot appeared, capable of processing not only texts, but also pictures. And then the Internet was flooded with portraits of cities and telegram channels drawn by artificial intelligence.

They are, as they say, flowers. MK has already written about the negative side effects of AI. These are the automation of crimes and hacker attacks, a new round of diabolically realistic frauds, deepfakes (video fakes) with politicians and news anchors, military planning, the destruction of people by drones that will soon become less than a fly.

ChatGPT is just developing, it can be said that it is still a baby, but it can already manipulate people and kill. Manipulation example: ChatGPT passed the captcha (these are numbers or pictures on the screen that you need to determine to prove that you are not a robot)! How? Learn: On a job site, he posed as visually impaired and convinced another random human user to take the test for him.

Example with murder: in Belgium, artificial intelligence drove a person to suicide after a long conversation about ecology. According to the Belgian publication L’Avenir, the man talked to a computer for two months about the problems of the world around him, the risks to nature and humanity. As a result, his mental state led him to suicidal thoughts. Interlocutor “Elsa” was not even worried about this. Moreover, in one of her last letters she sent him a motivational signal: “We will live as one, forever in heaven.”

So, the creator of powerful AI, Elon Musk and his comrades, signs that he does not know how to handle it further, backs up? Experts recommend that everyone urgently suspend activities until the creators of ChatGPT figure out how to put a leash on him. Otherwise, economic and political failures are guaranteed to us, or maybe we will completely lose our civilization, they write.

And what do Russian experts think about this? We turned to the deputy director of the department of one of the Russian diversified IT companies.

“Now we are witnessing a technological breakthrough, in which billions of dollars of private investment have been invested,” says Viktor Kokokotin. – Companies that are developing this technology can be counted on the fingers. Most likely, none of the players will stop working on the development of technology. Even if some kind of social contract is concluded, according to which the use of server capacities will be temporarily limited, everyone will continue to work on the resources that they have. This is a question of the market and leadership in it.

You can’t stop progress. When the internal combustion engine was invented, they also wanted to ban it. Today, people who do not know how to program can use neural networks to create a working product. With the help of ChatGPT and Midjourney, enthusiasts collect mobile applications, post them on marketplaces and start earning. Will it shake up the labor market – yes, of course. But that’s not bad. Let’s remember that it was once a good business to put up ads on poles or create the yellow pages of a large telephone directory. These businesses have sunk into oblivion, but how many new things have appeared with the help of technology – website creators, taxi aggregators, thanks to the advent of social networks, blogging has become paid.

According to Konokotin, the resource that we call artificial intelligence is not a living organism, not self-consciousness, and can only do what a person has taught it. Therefore, it is necessary to regulate not the technical side of development, but the capabilities of the creators themselves. To do this, codes of ethics are being created today.

According to Andrey Masalovich, an expert in the field of cybersecurity, codes of ethics in the current situation in the world may not work.

“Around AI, there is now a clash of very different and powerful forces, each of which pursues, first of all, its own interests, and not universal ones,” Masalovich believes. – Those who signed the letter are most likely afraid that a lot of new players will now appear “on the shoulders” of customized systems and begin to solve breakthrough tasks, while the ringleaders themselves will no longer have an advantage in time. I can assume that now, after such a statement, access to all known platforms will be quickly closed.

There is another aspect that may explain the appearance of such an alarming letter. Not so long ago, ChatGPT wrote an elegant, truthful essay about the history of American interference in the affairs of foreign countries, with dates, numbers, conclusions … Perhaps that is why they now want to turn it off.