Artificial intelligence experts expressed concern after their work was cited in an open letter.signed by Elon Musk in which it was required urgent pause in the investigation.

a letter dated March 22, which has garnered more than 1,800 signatures as of Friday, urged Pause six months in system development”more powerful” than the new OpenAI GPT-4, backed by Microsoft MSFT.ORwho can carry on human conversation, compose songs, and summarize long documents.

Since launch last year ChatGPT, predecessor of GPT-4companies competitors they quickly launched similar products.

The open letter states that AI systems with “competitive human intelligence” pose a serious danger to humanity, citing 12 investigations conducted by experts, including scientists and university staff, as well as former employees of OpenAI, Google GOOGL.O and its subsidiary DeepMind.

State civil society groups joined And EU they have since lobbied parliamentarians to stop the OpenAI investigation. However, OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Critics blamed the Future of Life Institute (FLI), the organization behind the letter. funded mostly for himto the Musk Foundation prioritize imaginary doomsday scenarios over more pressing concerns about AI, such as racist or gender bias programmed into machines.

Referenced studies include “On the dangers of stochastic parrots” (On the dangers of stochastic parrots) famous article Co-authored with Margaret Mitchell, who previously oversaw AI ethics research at Google.

Mitchell, now head of science ethics at AI company Hugging Face, criticized the letter, telling Reuters it’s unclear what is considered “more powerful than GPT4”.

“Taking many questionable ideas for granted, the letter reaffirms a set of priorities and a narrative about AI that benefits FLI supporters,” he said. “Ignoring active damage right now is a perk some of us don’t have”

Its co-authors Timnit Gebru and Emily M. Bender criticized the letter on Twitter, with the latter calling some of its claims “nonsensical”.

FLI President Max Tegmark told Reuters that the campaign was not an attempt to undermine OpenAI’s corporate advantage.

“It’s pretty funny. I’ve seen people say, “Elon Musk is trying to slow down the competition,” he said, adding that Musk was not involved in writing the letter. “This is not a company.”

taking risks now

Shiri Dori-Hakoen, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut, also criticized the mention of her work in the letter. Last year, Dori-Hakoen co-authored A a study in which he argued that the widespread use of artificial intelligence already poses serious risks.

His research argued that the current use of information systems AI can influence decision making regarding climate change, nuclear war and other existential threats.

As he told the Reuters news agency, “AI doesn’t need to reach human levels of intelligence to exacerbate these risks.”

There are non-existent risks that are very, very important, but they don’t get as much attention at the Hollywood level.

When FLI’s Tegmark was asked to comment on the criticism, he said the short- and long-term risks of AI should be taken seriously.

“If we quote someone, it only means that we say that they support this proposal. It doesn’t mean that they approve of the lyrics or that we approve of everything they think,” he told Reuters.