The Debate Over an AI Pause: Experts Disagree on Length and Effectiveness.

Four AI experts have expressed concern after their work was cited in an open letter, co-signed by Elon Musk, demanding an urgent pause in research. The letter called for a six-month circuit-breaker in the development of systems "more powerful" than Microsoft-backed OpenAI's new GPT-4, which can hold human-like conversation, compose songs and summarise lengthy documents. Critics have accused the Future of Life Institute (FLI), the organisation behind the letter which is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation, of prioritising imagined apocalyptic scenarios over more immediate concerns about AI, such as racist or sexist biases being programmed into the machines.