Applied ethics isn’t a checklist. It’s about putting in the time and effort to understand risks to wellbeing with the express intent of avoiding, mitigating and monitoring harm. It makes sense then to assume that the open call to pause AI development is a good thing. Well, yes — but no.
Let’s talk about some things that are going on with the touted open letter signed by the likes of Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Yuval Noah Harari, Andrew Yang, Gary Marcus and Tristan Harris. More than an open letter it is in many ways a letter of misdirection. And who authored it exactly?
Some points brought up in this story
- The host organisation
- Essentially no mention of all the current harm
- Boosting the idea of sentience
- Misleading citations
- The choice of “6 months”
- We vs. they
