Elon Musk and tech execs call for pause on AI development

March 30, 2023 Coin Telegraph

The authors of the letter say that advanced artificial intelligence could cause a profound change in the history of life on Earth, for better or worse.

More than 2,600 tech leaders and researchers have signed an open letter urging a temporary pause on further artificial intelligence (AI) development, fearing “profound risks to society and humanity.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and a host of AI CEOs, CTOs and researchers were among the signatories of the letter, which was published by the United States think tank Future of Life Institute (FOLI) on March 22.

The institute called on all AI companies to “immediately pause” training AI systems that are more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months, sharing concerns that “human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity,” among other things.

We're calling on AI labs to temporarily pause training powerful models!

Join FLI's call alongside Yoshua Bengio, @stevewoz, @harari_yuval, @elonmusk, @GaryMarcus & over a 1000 others who've signed: https://t.co/3rJBjDXapc

A short on why we're calling for this - (1/8)
— Future of Life Institute (@FLIxrisk) March 29, 2023

“Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources. Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening,” the institute wrote.

GPT-4 is the latest iteration of OpenAI’s artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, which was released on March 14. To date, it has passed some of the most rigorous U.S. high school and law exams within the 90th percentile. It is understood to be 10 times more advanced than the original version of ChatGPT.

There is an “out-of-control race” between AI firms to develop more powerful AI, whi“no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict, or reliably control," FOLI claimed.

BREAKING: A petition is circulating to PAUSE all major AI developments.

e.g. No more ChatGPT upgrades & many others.

Signed by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Stability AI CEO & 1000s of other tech leaders.

Here's the breakdown: pic.twitter.com/jR4Z3sNdDw
— Lorenzo Green 〰️ (@mrgreen) March 29, 2023

Among the top concerns were whether machines could flood information channels, potentially with “propaganda and untruth” and whether machines will “automate away” all employment opportunities.

FOLI took these concerns one step further, suggesting that the entrepreneurial efforts of these AI companies may lead to an existential threat:

“Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?”

“Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders,” the letter added.

Having a bit of AI existential angst today
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 26, 2023

The institute also agreed with a recent statement from OpenAI founder Sam Altman that an independent review should be required before training future AI systems.

Altman in his Feb. 24 blog post highlighted the need to prepare for artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI) robots.

Not all AI pundits have rushed to sign the petition, though. Ben Goertzel, the CEO of SingularityNET, explained in a March 29 Twitter response to Gary Marcus, the author of Rebooting.AI, that language learning models (LLMs) won’t become AGIs, which, to date, there have been few developments of.

Instead, he said research and development should be slowed down for things like bioweapons and nukes:

On the whole, human society will be better off with GPT-5 than GPT-4 -- better to have slightly smarter models around. AIs taking human jobs will ultimately a good thing. The hallucinations and banality will decrease and folks will learn to work around them.
— Ben Goertzel (@bengoertzel) March 29, 2023

In addition to language learning models like ChatGPT, AI-powered deep fake technology has been used to create convincing images, audio and video hoaxes. The technology has also been used to create AI-generated artwork, with some concerns raised about whether it could violate copyright laws in certain cases.

Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz recently told investors he was shocked over the amount of regulatory attention that has been given to crypto, while little has been toward artificial intelligence.

“When I think about AI, it shocks me that we’re talking so much about crypto regulation and nothing about AI regulation. I mean, I think the government’s got it completely upside-down,” he opined during a shareholders call on March 28.

FOLI has argued that should AI development pause not be enacted quickly, governments should get involved with a moratorium.

“This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium,” it wrote.

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artificial intelligence

Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz believes regulators have got it "completely upside-down" on crypto vs AI regulation.

Mike Novogratz, the CEO of digital asset investment firm Galaxy Digital told investors he is shocked over the amount of regulatory attention for crypto rather than artificial intelligence (AI), a technology he believes will trigger a “deep fake” identity crisis.

The chief executive explained at the firm’s fourth-quarter conference call on March 28 that the U.S. government has it “completely upside-down” in choosing to focus so much on crypto regulation and yet turn a blind eye to AI:

“When I think about AI, it shocks me that we’re talking so much about crypto regulation and nothing about AI regulation. I mean, I think the government’s got it completely upside-down.”

This concern appeared to stem from Novogratz’s fear that AI will trigger a “deep fake” identity crisis.

“In lots of ways, one of the best use cases for crypto is going to be identity around AI, because pretty soon you’re going to get a fake Mike Novogratz, hopefully with hair [...] how do you prove identity in a world like that?” he said.

AI portrait Van Novo pic.twitter.com/ESnenSDmdb
— Mike Novogratz (@novogratz) July 16, 2022

However, he believes blockchain-based applications will play a “huge role” in combating some of the issues presented by AI:

“Crypto and blockchain is going to have a huge role in that. It is dumb to think that we should cache this industry because of Sam Bankman-Fried in his Bermuda shorts, period.”

That said, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently engaged in talks about AI and its impacts with the Technology Advisory committee last week.

Seller exhaustion, China easing

As for the current state of the market, Novogratz said “seller exhaustion” and the reopening of China has helped the crypto industry recover remarkably thus far in 2023.

“All the selling that needed to get done got done, right? There was so much bad news, if you had to sell, panic selling and just the nervousness of “Oh my God! This thing could go to zero,” and people were in sheer panic, you had seller’s exhaustion,” he said.

Following a tough zero-COVID approach by the Chinese government, Novogratz said he has since noticed more crypto activity coming out of China.

“China took the regulatory boot off the necks of their tech companies, and that includes crypto, [so] you’re seeing more activity from Asia.”

From a more technical lens, Novogratz was confident that the crypto market will continue in an upwards trajectory throughout the remainder of 2023:

“The market feels strong, and when I look at it technically on charts, we’ve had big weekly closes. I’m surprised to hear myself say this, given where my mindset was in late December, but it would not surprise if we were substantially higher three months, six months, nine months from now.”

The strong rebound in the crypto market reflected well on Galaxy’s balance sheet too with the firm today revealing in its quarterly results that it finally swung back into profit after a tough loss of $1 billion in 2022.

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March 16, 2023 Coin Telegraph

BTC

The Galaxy Digital CEO predicts tough times ahead for the U.S. economy, but continues to be bullish on crypto.

The United States is headed for a credit crunch and now is the right time to buy gold, silver and Bitcoin (BTC), says Galaxy Digital founder and CEO Michael Novogratz.

“We are going to have a credit crunch in the U.S. and globally,” Novogratz explained in an interview on CNBC. "You want to be long gold and silver [...] and you want to be long Bitcoin,” he said.

Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box on March 15, Novogratz noted that banks typically rebuild capital by lending less, meaning that a credit crunch is imminent, noting that indicators like the commodities market are already pointing to a recession.

The U.S. banking industry fell into turmoil this month, with Silvergate Bank, Signature Bank, and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) all collapsing in the same week. Moody's downgraded the U.S. banking system outlook to "negative."

In the interview, Novogratz suggested a reversal in interest rate policy was on the cards, saying that while the Federal Reserve would “like to do a dovish hike, just for credibility’s sale,” doing so would be a “huge policy error.”

Alongside his prediction of tough times for the U.S. economy, Novogratz expressed a bullish sentiment for crypto, saying:

“If there was ever a time to be in bitcoin and crypto, this is why it was created, in that governments print too much money whenever the pain gets too great, and we’re seeing that.”

The price of Bitcoin dipped after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last week but managed to reach new 2023 highs of $26,514.72 on March 14, according to CoinMarketCap.

Looks like Bitcoin is moving on from its risk asset days. As more and more people begin to understand its fundamental value case, the market is slowly turning to Bitcoin as a digital form of gold.
— Handre van Heerden (@Handrev) March 14, 2023

Galaxy Digital