Yes, It is scary, but the potential, too, is staring at us.

There is a continuum of beliefs on what harm AI can give to what AI can benefit humanity in a safe, fair, and equitable way. On one side, machines will outsmart human intelligence and make us slaves; on the other side, as a society, we will flourish through productivity increase, scientific breakthroughs, and accessibility to better education and better health. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is not here yet to slave us or destroy humanity. Still, we may be more addicted to devices, lose the human touch, drown in misinformation, jeopardize democracy, and widen inequalities. So when the call for a 6-month moratorium on AI progress beyond GPT-4 was announced, it made sense to have some time to think about future consequences, establish governance and regulations around the use of AI and create a roadmap to arrive at the flourishing side of the continuum. 

After reflecting on the moratorium call, though, it is hard to see that it is practical. Rather than pausing innovation, we should call for an emergency action plan from governing institutions and ask big corporations to help jump-start such regulation talks with governments. If the handful of powerful tech companies meant what they say with safe, responsible, and democratized AI, they should get together and push the governments to start working. This way, they can continue innovating more safely and responsibly and pave the way for many potentials we hope to get. This is why we want to start a nonprofit research company to work on safe and responsible AI that serves all of humanity too.

Esin Darici