Elon Musk Calls for Hold on AI

A Recent Elon Musk Interview: My Review (Part 1)

Earlier this week on Fox News, Tucker Carlson aired a full hour interview with Elon Musk on the subject of artificial intelligence. The interview came shortly after various news outlets began to report that signatures of dignitaries were being collected calling for a six-month halt to the training of AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Google's "Deep Mind".

Don't worry, your new favorite tool is not going away. The petitioners are not asking for the current services to stop, but that no further "deep" learning (in which the program teaches itself) or other forms of BOT training, beyond ChatGPT 4, continue for six months.

GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. Who knew that acronym?

GO ELON!

I can't hold back. I love Elon Musk! And it is not only because of the dimples and the twinkle in his eyes when he answers someone's rude tirade-- with a few succinctly choice words-- a skill of which he is the master. Twitter is his perfect platform. His answers, or rebukes, are short and sweet, TRUE, and cut to the quick.

I am reminded of the two-edged sword that can sever even the soul from the spirit.

So, I love Mr. Musk most because of his fearless exposé of the U.S. government's and other powers' roles in controlling mine and yours, speech in Twitter. I love him for his stand against tyranny of any kind. He is very good at describing why socialism never works and in the end everyone loses except those few at the top in power.

When asked about Twitter, he very honestly admitted he bought it in the first place as an investment. And furthermore, he feels embarrassed at his poor investment timing. Don't we all. No, not all.

What Did Elon Say About Slowing Down "Deep Learning"?

The first question Tucker asked Elon was: What could happen if we don't slow down AI?

Elon answered: Anything from a small mistake in airplane design up to and including annihilation of humankind could happen. He said far too many people are unaware of human fragility, that our entire physical (global) system is in delicate balance and not as robust as we may believe.

That is a broad statement. But if one considers what could happen when a small mistake is made in airplane design, we might curb the blasé attitude some of us may have adopted.

When asked about Google, Musk answered, "The person in charge may not be very serious about safety."

Elon Musk and others are simply saying: Slow down until we get it 100% correct. There really is no room for error in many use cases.

On Google's Co-Founder, Larry Page

The following bit is in my words and dependent on my memory. Take it with a grain of salt. Yes, I do love cliches.

At this point in the interview, Elon spoke about how deeply he had been involved in the beginning stages of AI development and how troubled he was with the direction it is going. He spoke of a conversation between him and Larry Page (several years ago) and the future of AI.

They were friends until their various projects took them in different directions. But in that conversation, which was their last, Elon asked Larry Page if he was willing to build something that could threaten the human race down the road. And Page indicated, for him, everything has to be about the money.

Then Elon got this quirky, impish smile, that I find so endearing, and said, "He called me a specist." 

Some philosophers have argued that there is a normative relationship between speciesism and other prejudices such as racism, sexism, homophobia and so forth.

"He called you a specist?" said Tucker Carlson, laughing. "What are you going to do?"

I must close Part 1 of my review of the interview here. And I cordially invite you to read Part 2 of this interview coming soon.

I highly recommend you read the article and the open letter, which is the petition being compiled to slow down on the programming of Artificial Intelligence, referenced here.

https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/

Signatories list slowed due to high demand. . .

Also, found in the link above, I included a short section here of names, titles, and positions of signees:

"We have collected over 30,000 signatures and hope signatories will be patient as our vetting process tries to catch up. The high-profile signatures near the top of the list are all independently and directly verified."

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"

Bart Selman, Bart Selman Cornell, Professor of Computer Science, past president of AAAI

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

P.S. New news: As of last Friday, Tucker Carlson and Fox News have parted ways.

Thank you for reading. I hope to see you next time. As Always, Donna

P.S. Jeffrey, Susan, and others. . .. You were right, but it's still going to be OK.