Elon Musk’s proposed temporary halt to AI development would give China freedom to surpass the US and create “the most powerful tool” of the 21st century, according to an industry expert.
“We need artificial intelligence to automate and manage much of the existing technology and give us the ability to manage a significantly larger population,” Sultan Meghji, a professor at Duke University’s Pratt Engineering School, told Fox News Digital . “We won’t be able to do this without artificial intelligence.”
“If we look at our global competition with the People’s Republic of China and others,” said Meghji, who acted first Chief Innovation Officer for the FDICargued, “Artificial intelligence is the most powerful tool in our toolbox, and I don’t want to lose the 21st century to the Chinese.”
Musk joined more than 1,000 signatories — including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, among other technology leaders and artificial intelligence experts — to call for a six-month hiatus in the development of “powerful” AI systems.
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Sultan Meghji, a professor at Duke University’s Pratt Engineering School and former Chief Innovation Officer of the FDIC. (Sultan Meghji)
The letter urges AI developers to “stop training AI systems that are more powerful than GPT-4 immediately for at least 6 months.”
“Powerful AI systems should not be developed until we are confident that their impacts are positive and their risks manageable,” the letter said, but Meghji, who has no intention of signing the letter, blamed the signers , in their own actions to do more self-interest “than in the interest of our civilization”.
“We as a species have never been able to limit the development of technology when we choose to, and we as a civilization have chosen to invest in that technology,” he explained, saying he’d rather make sure that the work will continue in a “responsible, open, transparent and valuable way”.
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Tesla and SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk speaks at the Satellite Conference and Expo in Washington March 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, file)
One of the things he tackled during his time with the FDIC was figuring out how to integrate technology like AI into all facets of operations, from simple tasks like handling email and chatting to running government phones on display to how AI could help find vulnerabilities in the banking system.
Meghji quit the role after just a year, citing pervasive “technophobia” across the federal agency.
“What I was asked to do by the FDIC chairman was constrained by the organization’s fear and lack of technology understanding,” he said, adding that officials appeared to think “what they learned in the 1980s was the right one.” way of doing things and that the world hasn’t changed since then.”
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A Google Bard AI logo displayed on a smartphone with a chat GPT logo in the background. (Photo illustration by Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The same fear he saw at the FDIC is playing into the current AI discussion, preventing the public from seeing the good the technology can create.
“I think AI is a very broad field and like any tool or technology and all of human civilization, it can be used for good or evil, and that simply by caring about the evil it can do, we can do the much broader Ignoring benefits that it can hold,” Meghji said.
He acknowledged that there are legitimate fears that AI is evolving “solely for commercial gain without regard to anything else,” much like the internet is evolving from “fundamentally the greatest source of information in all of human history” to “an advertising platform for teenagers.” have. ”
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But he stressed that while he has sympathy for those who suffer from a “very strong” fear of change brought on by AI, including the potential destruction of some jobs, it is part of civilization’s job to ensure that people have the Introducing new technology “in thoughtful ways.”
Source : www.foxnews.com