The Alignment
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Pause AI for 6 months ?

Pause AI for 6 months ?

PLUS Goldman is bullish on AI and the internet's weird fascination with AI Pope

The Alignment
March 29, 2023

Good day folks ! From top AI leaders signing a letter to pause all large scale AI development to Goldman "optimistically" predicting AI affecting 300 million jobs, there is loads to unpack today.

Here’s whats on the docket today -

Pause all AI, immediately !
Goldman is bullish on AI despite labour market disruption
The internet's weird fascination with AI Pope

Pause Giant AI Experiments, Immediately!

The Future of Life institute has penned an open letter to pause all large scale AI research similar to GPT-4. Endorsed and signed by Turing award winner Yoshua Bengio, Elon Musk, leading AI researchers and over 1000 other people, the letter argues that a 6 month pause is necessary on the training of AI models that compete with human intelligence.

The letter states “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.”

The pause should be used by AI labs to jointly develop and implement safety standards that AI systems will follow industry wide. The letter does not call for a blanket halt in the AI industry but rather developing the rules and bounds of the “dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities.”

The letter urges that to enjoy a safe and flourishing future with AI this pause is necessary and not implementing it could be catastrophic.

For companies, this pause could be the difference between survival and death. Those that choose to follow it might fall behind in a race that is only going to get more competitive.

In the second half of the 20th century there was almost a blanket ban on developing nuclear technologies for societal uses. Many today look back and wonder if that was actually effective and needed. We need to move ahead accordingly.

Goldman Sachs is bullish on AI despite jobs being disrupted

Goldman Sachs is bullish on AI. Goldman economists report that given the current pace of progress AI, we can expect -

Rise in annual global GDP by 7% over the next 10 years. That’s an additional $7 trillion in the economy.
Automation of 25% of the work done by all skilled labour in the US and Eurozone. Affecting close to 300 million people globally.

While folks might look at this and get nervous, it’s important to understand that AI will complement your work and not replace it. What we expect to see is massive increases in worker productivity rather than entire labour forces becoming redundant.

New jobs will also be created as a result of training people on how to use AI systems effectively in the workplace. So while some jobs may go extinct, it's never a bad time to up-skill yourselves.

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