A petition to "pace the frontier"
Employees of frontier AI companies want to be able to trust a mutual slow-down
More than a thousand employees of frontier AI companies have signed on to a short statement that warns of the potential for AI development to rapidly accelerate beyond “our ability to understand or control.” Signatories to the new statement include four of Anthropic’s co-founders, OpenAI’s chief scientist, OpenAI’s chief research officer, Meta’s chief scientist, and Google’s VP of AI Safety & Alignment.
The statement makes the following call to action:
We request that the U.S. government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.
The “governance tools” in question are those mechanisms that would be needed for parties to reassure each other that they are not secretly racing to more powerful models while outwardly agreeing to slow down.
Some of those tools could be technical, like tamper-resistant chips that would be very difficult to use in unauthorized ways or in unauthorized locations without leaving fingerprints to that effect. Others would be more regulatory and political, like tighter monitoring of the AI chip supply chain. A mix of many kinds of tools will likely be needed.
I, for one, am highly encouraged by the new statement. A call for developing governance tools may seem several steps removed from what ultimately needs to happen, but it is a necessary step that cuts to the heart of the race dynamics that have people feeling trapped. And I think many policymakers are going to be surprised by how much groundwork for governance already exists: MIRI’s Technical Governance Team has been cataloguing the possible tools and exploring how best to arrange them to prevent the premature creation of artificial superintelligence.
This makes me optimistic that governments will soon move ahead with existing tools so that they will be prepared to move quickly on a slowdown or pause, once satisfied that any missing tools can be ready by the time any international agreement is finalized.
The statement’s web page includes quotes provided by signatories. Leo Gao, a member of the technical staff at OpenAI, writes:
The world is locked in a deadly race towards an intelligence explosion, where AI’s ability to create better AIs reaches a critical point, just like a runaway nuclear chain reaction. Going slower would give us much-needed time to make it go well, but no individual actor is willing to stop unilaterally. To survive, we must coordinate to slow down the race.
The analyses and opinions expressed on AI StopWatch reflect the views of the individual contributors and the sources they cover, and should not be taken as official positions of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.
I'm not sure if I've ever received this good of news in my entire life!! We aren't out of the woods yet, but to my weary spirit, this open letter represents an absolutely incandescent hope.