Meta Chief AI Scientist Reacts After Elon Musk And Co's Call To Pause AI Trials: 'Preposterously Stupid'

Days after more than 1,000 parties, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, signed an “open letter” calling for a pause on training artificial intelligence systems exceeding OpenAI GPT-4, Meta Platforms Inc‘s META chief AI scientist took to Twitter to share his views. 

What Happened: On Sunday, Yann LeCun — Meta’s chief AI scientist and a professor at New York University — said the typical process for the development and deployment of new technology involves creating a prototype, testing it on a small scale, implementing it in a limited capacity, addressing any issues and improving its safety. 

Following this, governments step in to regulate the technology and establish safety standards.

See Also: Warning: Hackers Using Bing’s AI Chatbot To Trick Users

He seems to be referring to the aforementioned open letter, which called for all AI labs to immediately pause the training of systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months — until safety protocols are created, executed and evaluated by independent experts. 

LeCun went on to say that people are excessively concerned about the risk associated with AI because they think the moment a super-intelligence system is activated, humanity’s fate is sealed — an idea that is “preposterously stupid” and based on fundamental misinterpretation.

Why It’s Important: Previously, the godfather of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, also weighed in on the growing concerns about AI outsmarting humans and taking over the world. 

He said the actual risk comes with human’s increasing reliance on technology which could lead to mutual unintelligibility or insanity. 

Check out more of Benzinga’s Consumer Tech coverage by following this link.

Read Next: Meta Shuns ChatGPT Model In Sharing AI Tools Despite Leak Rumors For ‘Responsibility, Openness’