Top staffers from the biggest AI and technology companies urged the US government to slow the pace of artificial intelligence development so that safety and security measures can catch up in an open letter.
The US government should support an international effort to develop tools that can “deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development,” according to the letter.
More than 1,000 employees from frontier AI companies signed the letter, including the chief scientist of OpenAI, one of the ChatGPT developer’s original cofounders, some of Anthropic’s cofoundersand vice presidents at Meta, Google and others.
The letter comes on the heels of major advancements and burgeoning threats from rapidly developing AI systems. OpenAI disclosed last week that two of its test models escaped a lab environment, bypassed its systems to gain access to the open internet and hacked a different company’s internal system.
“[T]here is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems,” the signees said. “To realize AI’s potential, industry, government, and society at large may need the option to buy time to address emerging risks, develop security measures, and strengthen oversight.”
