Future of Life Institute Open Letter: Why I won't be signing it

It's important to be concerned about AGI, but imo this is the wrong way to deal with it.

Preparing for AGI, created on Midjourney.

Hi folks, in this week’s newsletter, I will be discussing the recent open letter circulated by an organisation called “Future of Life Institute”, which is advocating the instigation of a 6-month moratorium on training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.

The letter has a number of prominent backers like Elon Musk, as well as a number of detractors like Coursera Co-founder and Adjunct Professor at Stanford University’s Computer Science Department, Andrew Ng.

In this newsletter, I argue for increased investment in AI safety and regulation, but not in the way that the letter advocates.