Bill Gates has said a pause on the development of artificial intelligence won’t solve the challenges the technology presents, Reuters has reported. His comments come after 1,100 signatories published a letter calling for all generative AI labs to halt the training of AI systems for half a year for guardrails to be put in place.
On the matter of a pause, the Microsoft co-founder said:
“I don’t think asking one particular group to pause solves the challenges. Clearly there’s huge benefits to these things… what we need to do is identify the tricky areas. I don’t really understand who they’re saying could stop, and would every country in the world agree to stop, and why to stop. But there are a lot of different opinions in this area.”
When it was getting on for the end of March, Gates posted a piece on his blog explaining that artificial intelligence was as revolutionary as mobile phones and the internet. It’s true we’ve had AI for a while through services like Alexa and Google Assistant but with ChatGPT and Google Bard, we’ve seen a substantial improvement in the technology.
It’s not clear yet whether the letter calling for a pause will be heeded or ignored, but over the weekend, Italian deputy PM Matteo Salvini said the block on ChatGPT introduced by the country’s Data Protection Authority was excessive. This could suggest that politicians aren’t on board with limiting access or stifling these services.
Source: Reuters