The race for ever more powerful artificial intelligence, a danger for humans? Elon Musk and hundreds of global experts on Wednesday signed a call for a six-month pause in AI research that could surpass ChatGPT 4. ‘the establishment of security systems, including new dedicated regulatory authorities, oversight of AI systems, techniques to help distinguish the real from the artificial, and institutions capable of managing “economic and political disruptions drama (especially for democracy) that AI will cause”.

The petition brings together figures who have already publicly expressed their fears of out-of-control AI that outperforms humans, including Elon Musk, owner of Twitter and founder of SpaceX and Tesla, and Yuval Noah Harari, author of “Sapiens.” .

Also a signatory, Yoshua Bengio, Canadian pioneer of AI, expressed his concerns during a virtual press conference in Montreal. “I don’t think society is ready to deal with that power, the potential for manipulating people, for example, that could endanger democracies.” “So we have to take the time to slow down this trade race that is on its way,” he added, calling for these issues to be discussed at a global level, “like we have done for energy and nuclear weapons. “.

OpenAI boss Sam Altman, designer of chatGPT, himself admitted to being “a little bit scared” of his creation if it was used for “large-scale misinformation or cyberattacks”. “Society needs time to adjust,” he told ABCNews in mid-March.

“The past few months have seen AI labs locked in an uncontrolled race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital brains, which no one – not even their creators – can reliably understand, predict or control.” -they.

“Should we let the machines flood our information channels with propaganda and lies? Should we automate all jobs, including rewarding ones? Do we need to develop non-human minds that may one day be more numerous, smarter, more obsolete and replace us? Should we risk losing control of our civilization? These decisions should not be delegated to unelected technology leaders,” they conclude.

The signatories also include Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, members of Google’s DeepMind AI lab, OpenAI competitor Stability AI boss Emad Mostaque, as well as AI experts and American academics, Microsoft executive engineers. , an OpenAI ally group.