AI will tear us apart!

Dear Readers,

This week's DMR Digest is about a subject I posted a couple of days ago but I thought it deserved to be repeated here with some more information. This is about Strong AI and its future, which at the moment is unsettling to say the least.

#AI?will tear us apart is the?Financial Times?Magazine front cover this weekend - white letters on a black background; stopped me in my tracks and made me re-think what I know about Artificial General Intelligence (#AGI) or Strong AI.

Last decade when people asked me about when AGI will happen my response was:

1) the optimists say : in a decade

2) the realists say : by the end of this century

3) the pessimists say: never

I am an optimist which implies two things: that I believe AGI can be a good thing and that I expect it to happen by 2030.

I always knew that humanity had to get its act together with establishing legal and ethical frameworks for AGI - which we haven't yet.

This is now becoming imminent and an absolute necessity. Progress is way faster than anticipated and it accelerates. It looks like the Optimists got it right. AGI is not here yet but the?#Turing?definition of Strong AI has been achieved....only his definitition is not about how we understand AGI today.

While the Turing Test is still widely recognized as a benchmark for evaluating the intelligence of a machine, it is not necessarily considered the definitive definition of AGI. AGI is generally understood to refer to an AI system that can perform any intellectual task that a human can do, not just the task of fooling a human evaluator into thinking that it is human.

We now understand AGI as God-like, so much more powerful than a human which is what Turing's definition was describing.

According to the FT article some really smart people including #elonmusk signed a petition asking Corporations and Governments to pause the R&D race on AGI for 6 months until we can decide how we can make them safer (see partial list below).

Sounds very reasonable to me.

Think of an alternative like the scenaria in the Holywood movies: Ex Machina and Terminator.

Here is a quote from the Wall Street Journal on March 30,2023: "Artificial intelligence is unreservedly advanced by the stupid (there’s nothing to fear, you’re being paranoid), the preening (buddy, you don’t know your GPT-3.4 from your fine-tuned LLM), and the greedy (there is huge wealth at stake in the world-changing technology, and so huge power). Everyone else has reservations and should."

I too have reservations, thus I signed the petition for a pause. You should click on the link and sign it also if you agree.

I will leave you with some alternative title suggestions for the above post, courtesy of Chatgpt:

• The Urgent Need for Legal and Ethical Frameworks for Strong AI
• Strong AI: Are We Prepared for Its Arrival?
• AGI and the Future: Why a Safety Pause Is Necessary
• The FT's Article on Strong AI and the Call for Action
• The Risks and Opportunities of Strong AI: The Time to Act is Now
• Strong AI: A Power That Requires Attention and Caution
• AGI and the Turing Test: What It Means for Humanity's Future
• AGI and the Hollywood Scenario: Lessons from Ex Machina and Terminator
• The Dangers of Strong AI: Urgent Action Required
• AGI and the Machine that Kills the Creator: A Wake-Up Call for Humanity

Thanks for reading and taking action!

P.S. Here is a selected list of public figures who signed the pledge:

Yoshua Bengio, Founder and Scientific Director at Mila, Turing Prize winner and professor at University of Montreal

Stuart Russell, Berkeley, Professor of Computer Science, director of the Center for Intelligent Systems, and co-author of the standard textbook “Artificial Intelligence: a Modern Approach"

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, Tesla & Twitter

Steve Wozniak, Co-founder, Apple

Yuval Noah Harari, Author and Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Emad Mostaque, CEO, Stability AI

Andrew Yang, Forward Party, Co-Chair, Presidential Candidate 2020, NYT Bestselling Author, Presidential Ambassador of Global Entrepreneurship

John J Hopfield, Princeton University, Professor Emeritus, inventor of associative neural networks

Valerie Pisano, President & CEO, MILA

Connor Leahy, CEO, Conjecture

Jaan Tallinn, Co-Founder of Skype, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Future of Life Institute

Evan Sharp, Co-Founder, Pinterest

Chris Larsen, Co-Founder, Ripple

Craig Peters, Getty Images, CEO

Tom Gruber, Siri/Apple, Humanistic.AI, Co-founder, CTO, Led the team that designed Siri, co-founder of 4 companies

Max Tegmark, MIT Center for Artificial Intelligence & Fundamental Interactions, Professor of Physics, president of Future of Life Institute

Anthony Aguirre, University of California, Santa Cruz, Executive Director of Future of Life Institute, Professor of Physics

Sean O'Heigeartaigh, Executive Director, Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk

Tristan Harris, Executive Director, Center for Humane Technology

Rachel Bronson, President, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Danielle Allen, Harvard University, Professor and Director, Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics

Marc Rotenberg, Center for AI and Digital Policy, President

Nico Miailhe, The Future Society (TFS), Founder and President

Nate Soares, MIRI, Executive Director

Andrew Critch, Founder and President, Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative, CEO, Encultured AI, PBC; AI Research Scientist, UC Berkeley.

Mark Nitzberg, Center for Human-Compatible AI, UC Berkeley, Executive Directer

Yi Zeng, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor and Director, Brain-inspired Cognitive Intelligence Lab, International Research Center for AI Ethics and Governance, Lead Drafter of Beijing AI Principles

Steve Omohundro, Beneficial AI Research, CEO

Meia Chita-Tegmark, Co-Founder, Future of Life Institute

Victoria Krakovna, DeepMind, Research Scientist, co-founder of Future of Life Institute

Emilia Javorsky, Physician-Scientist & Director, Future of Life Institute

Mark Brakel, Director of Policy, Future of Life Institute

Aza Raskin, Center for Humane Technology / Earth Species Project, Cofounder, National Geographic Explorer, WEF Global AI Council

Gary Marcus, New York University, AI researcher, Professor Emeritus

Vincent Conitzer, Carnegie Mellon University and University of Oxford, Professor of Computer Science, Director of Foundations of Cooperative AI Lab, Head of Technical AI Engagement at the Institute for Ethics in AI, Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering, Computers and Thought Award, Social Choice and Welfare Prize, Guggenheim Fellow, Sloan Fellow, ACM Fellow, AAAI Fellow, ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award

Huw Price, University of Cambridge, Emeritus Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, FBA, FAHA, co-foundor of the Cambridge Centre for Existential Risk

Zachary Kenton, DeepMind, Senior Research Scientist

Ramana Kumar, DeepMind, Research Scientist

Jeff Orlowski-Yang, The Social Dilemma, Director, Three-time Emmy Award Winning Filmmaker

Olle H?ggstr?m, Chalmers University of Technology, Professor of mathematical statistics, Member, Royal Swedish Academy of Science

Michael Osborne, University of Oxford, Professor of Machine Learning

Raja Chatila, Sorbonne University, Paris, Professor Emeritus AI, Robotics and Technology Ethics, Fellow, IEEE

Moshe Vardi, Rice University, University Professor, US National Academy of Science, US National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Adam Smith, Boston University, Professor of Computer Science, G?del Prize, Kanellakis Prize, Fellow of the ACM

Marco Venuti, Director, Thales group

Erol Gelenbe, Institute of Theoretical and Applied Informatics, Polish Academy of Science, Professor, FACM FIEEE Fellow of the French National Acad. of Technologies, Fellow of the Turkish Academy of Sciences, Hon. Fellow of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hon. Fellow of the Islamic Academy of Sciences, Foreign Fellow of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters of Belgium, Foreign Fellow of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Member and Chair of the Informatics Committee of Academia Europaea

Andrew Briggs, University of Oxford, Professor, Member Academia Europaea

Laurence Devillers, à Sorbonne Université/CNRS, Professor d'IA, Légion d'honneur en 2019

Nicanor Perlas, Covid Call to Humanity, Founder and Chief Researcher and Editor, Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize); UNEP Global 500 Award

Daron Acemoglu, MIT, professor of Economics, Nemmers Prize in Economics, John Bates Clark Medal, and fellow of National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, British Academy, American Philosophical Society, Turkish Academy of Sciences.

Christof Koch, MindScope Program, Allen Institute, Seattle, Chief Scientist

Gaia Dempsey, Metaculus, CEO, Schmidt Futures Innovation Fellow

Henry Elkus, Founder & CEO: Helena

Gaétan Marceau Caron, MILA, Quebec AI Institute, Director, Applied Research Team

Peter Asaro, The New School, Associate Professor and Director of Media Studies

Jose H. Orallo, Technical University of Valencia, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Professor, EurAI Fellow

George Dyson, Unafilliated, Author of "Darwin Among the Machines" (1997), "Turing's Cathedral" (2012), "Analogia: The Emergence of Technology beyond Programmable Control" (2020).