In a recent interview, billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates said the recent call to pause the development of artificial intelligence will not be enforceable and could not “solve the challenges” ahead.
Gates discussed with Reuters the recent open letter co-signed by over one thousand artificial intelligence experts who called for an urgent pause in the development of AI systems “more powerful” than Microsoft’s OpenAI’s new GPT-4 that can compose songs, summarize documents, and conduct human-like conversations.
The experts, which included OpenAI founder Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, argued that the potential risks and benefits of the development of artificial intelligence must be assessed before more powerful systems are created.
Gates told Reuters that enforcing a pause on artificial intelligence development would be complicated. He said it isn’t clear who could impose a pause or if every country in the world would agree with the pause.
He said that it would be better to focus on how best to use AI development than to pause development as it would be difficult logistically to impose a pause globally.
He said he didn’t believe “asking one particular group to pause” will solve the challenges of artificial intelligence. Arguing that there are “huge benefits” to AI, Gates said what is needed is to “identify the tricky areas.”
In January, Microsoft, which previously invested in OpenAI, announced that it was expanding its partnership with the firm by investing billions of dollars into the company.
The following month, Forbes reported that Microsoft was launching a new version of its Bing search engine using the same technology behind ChatGPT in search queries.
Unsurprisingly, Gates has been a vocal supporter of artificial intelligence, saying the technology is as revolutionary as the Internet and mobile phones.
Just one day before the open letter was published, Gates penned a blog post titled “The Age of AI has begun” in which he argued that artificial intelligence could be used to help reduce the world’s worst inequities.
