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Bill Gates Dismisses Mounting Calls To Pause AI Chatbot Development

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Wednesday, Apr 05, 2023 - 09:45 AM

Reuters reports that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates dismissed calls to halt the development of more advanced AI chatbots more powerful than OpenAI's GPT-4. Last week, an open letter signed by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio called for a six-month pause in developing new AI tools. Gates stated that the proposed pause in AI chatbot development would not "solve the challenges."

According to Gates, the focus should be on effectively integrating AI technology into society. He finds it hard to understand how a pause could work globally with so many firms working on the technology. 

"I don't think asking one particular group to pause solves the challenges," the billionaire said on Monday.

"Clearly, there are huge benefits to these things… what we need to do is identify the tricky areas," he noted. 

In a recent op-ed titled "The Age of AI has begun" on "The Blog of Bill Gates," Gates outlined that the upcoming paradigm shift in technology is AI. Having been instrumental in developing personal computers several decades ago, the billionaire believes OpenAI's language generation AI tools will be at the forefront of the next technological revolution. 

Gates has also emerged as a significant player in the AI technology race, as Microsoft, the company he founded, has pledged over $10 billion in funding to OpenAI.

Meanwhile, Tesla's Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and more than 1,000 AI experts signed an open letter last week demanding the development of systems "more powerful" than GPT-4 to be paused for six months to weigh the risks/benefits to society. 

"I don't really understand who they're saying could stop, and would every country in the world agree to stop, and why to stop," Gates said. "But there are a lot of different opinions in this area."

Also, the tech ethics organization Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission late last week, asserting GPT-4 violates federal consumer protection law. And Italy just banned the AI chatbot, while Germany considers banning it. 

There is an apparent split among billionaires regarding their stance on quickly disseminating new AI tools throughout society rather than evaluating the impacts first. It is possible that tech investor David Sacks can provide insights into some of the reasons behind the increasing calls to temporarily suspend the creation of new OpenAI chatbots.

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