Today, the Future of Life Institute released an open letter, signed by leading AI experts such as Mila’s Yoshua Bengio and University of Toronto’s Gillian Hadfield, that calls for “AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4”.
While the policy suggested is unlikely to be sufficient on its own, the call for a pause captures the essence of the increasing concerns about AI – that it is being developed at breakneck speeds and irresponsibly deployed without public consultations or proper safety vetting. Good governance requires time to set up, and AI capabilities are vastly outpacing it.
The team and board of AIGS Canada, and with the support of the community, therefore strongly support this letter as a valuable step in the debate about AI governance and safety around the world.