Earlier this week, a man many call the godfather of artificial intelligence resigned from Google so that he can speak freely about the “dangers of A.I.”

Geoffrey Hinton is one of the computer scientists who pioneered the neural network technology that is at the core of modern A.I. systems such as ChapGPT.

Companies like Google and Microsoft are engaged in what amounts to a potentially disastrous digital arms race — rapidly developing ever more powerful artificial intelligence systems that they themselves may not be able to control.

Existing A.I. systems can already be a tool for misinformation and the generation of false text, images, and video. It may soon be essentially impossible for anyone to distinguish real images and sounds from fake ones.

In the near future, artificial intelligence could put millions of people out of work by doing all kinds of jobs that living, breathing human beings have been doing until now.

And there is a not zero chance that A.I. systems could someday become hostile to humanity and pose catastrophic risk. (I know that might sound like science fiction, but A LOT of really smart people think it’s at least enough of a possibility to worry about. And it wouldn’t necessarily require artificial intelligence systems to gain “sentience.”)

You’ll be hearing a lot more from Public Citizen about A.I. in the weeks and months ahead.

Here’s a crucial thing to know right now:

The grave threats have led to calls for a moratorium on the further development of A.I. technology — from hundreds of experts in the field of artificial intelligence itself as well as countless numbers of experts in other areas of human activity.

Companies aggressively rushing forward on risky A.I. include Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and OpenAI in the U.S. along with Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent in China. We know these companies can’t be trusted to behave responsibly of their own volition or to regulate themselves, especially now that they are in an A.I. arms race.

Help us send a direct message to Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and OpenAI:

Too many people to ignore — people who know what they’re talking about, including many who work or have worked in your companies — are worried about how fast you’re moving on artificial intelligence. You’ve entered into an A.I. arms race without even fully understanding how your systems really work and without knowing if you can actually control them. You must stop right now so that the government and the American people — and you yourselves — can figure out how to go forward on artificial intelligence safely (if that’s even possible).

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Thanks for taking action.

For progress,

- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen

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