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Humanity at risk: Musk, others ring alarm bells over hasty ‘giant AI experiments’

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Hundreds of celebrated artificial intelligence (AI) researchers including Tesla owner Elon Musk have undersigned an open letter recommending AI labs to revisit gigantic AI systems, ringing alarm bells over the “profound risks” these bots pose to society and humanity.

According to the letter, published by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, AI labs are currently locked in an “out-of-control race” to develop and deploy machine learning systems “that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict, or reliably control.”

“AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity,” said the open letter.

“Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.

AI engineers around the world want to make sure that these powerful AI systems should be allowed to take logical time for the researchers to make sure they were safe.

Among the signatories of the letter are author Yuval Noah Harari, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, politician Andrew Yang, and several well-known AI researchers and CEOs, including Stuart Russell, Yoshua Bengio, Gary Marcus, and Emad Mostaque. 

The letter was mainly prompted by the release of GPT-4 from the San Francisco firm OpenAI.

The company says its latest model is much more powerful than the previous version, which was used to power ChatGPT, a bot capable of generating tracts of text from the briefest of prompts.

“Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4,” says the letter. “This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.”

Musk was an initial investor in OpenAI, spent years on its board, and his car firm Tesla develops AI systems to help power its self-driving technology, among other applications.

The letter, hosted by the Musk-funded Future of Life Institute, was signed by prominent critics as well as competitors of OpenAI like Stability AI chief Emad Mostaque.

The letter quoted from a blog written by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, who suggested that “at some point, it may be important to get independent review before starting to train future systems”.

“We agree. That point is now,” the authors of the open letter wrote.

“Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”

They called for governments to step in and impose a moratorium if companies failed to agree.

The six months should be used to develop safety protocols, AI governance systems, and refocus research on ensuring AI systems are more accurate, safe, “trustworthy and loyal”.

The letter did not detail the dangers revealed by GPT-4.

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Cybersecurity firm reports exposure of sensitive DeepSeek data on the internet.

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The New York-based cybersecurity firm Wiz has discovered a cache of sensitive data from the Chinese artificial intelligence business DeepSeek that was mistakenly exposed to the public internet.

In a blog post released on Wednesday, Wiz reported that examinations of DeepSeek’s infrastructure revealed that the company had inadvertently exposed over a million lines of unencrypted data. The materials were digital software keys and chat logs that seemingly documented prompts transmitted from consumers to the company’s complimentary AI assistant.

The chief technical officer of Wiz stated that DeepSeek promptly safeguarded the data following the notice from his organisation.

“It was removed in under an hour,” stated Ami Luttwak. “However, this was exceedingly easy to locate, leading us to believe we are not the sole discoverers.”

DeepSeek did not promptly respond to a request for comment.

DeepSeek’s rapid success after the introduction of its AI helper has exhilarated China and incited concern in America. The Chinese company’s evident capacity to rival OpenAI’s skills at a significantly reduced cost has raised concerns regarding the viability of the business models and profit margins of U.S. AI behemoths like Nvidia and Microsoft.

By Monday, it surpassed the U.S. competitor ChatGPT in downloads from Apple’s App Store, prompting a worldwide decline in technology stocks.

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WhatsApp launches bulk channel management functionality

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WhatsApp has initiated testing of a bulk channel administration feature on iOS for select beta users, enabling the simultaneous selection of many channels, hence enhancing the efficiency of managing following channels.

This essential update enables users to perform bulk activities, including muting many channels simultaneously, designating them as read, and altering notifications. If the chosen channels are muted, users will now have the option to activate notifications. Users can swiftly silence unmuted channels in one action.

Additionally, this feature enables users to unfollow many channels simultaneously, thereby optimizing the process of decluttering their channel list. This change is particularly beneficial for users that oversee numerous subscriptions, as reported by WABetaInfo.

Previously, users were required to manage each channel individually, rendering tasks such as muting or designating channels as read laborious and time-consuming.

The functionality provides enhanced flexibility and control over channel subscriptions, enabling users to efficiently manage notifications. The solution streamlines laborious operations for consumers who subscribe to numerous channels, hence enhancing their entire experience.

Accessibility
The bulk management feature is presently accessible exclusively to a limited number of beta testers who installed the latest WhatsApp beta for iOS using the TestFlight application. WhatsApp, owned by Meta, plans to expand the feature’s availability to a larger user base in the next weeks.

This update demonstrates WhatsApp’s dedication to enhancing user experience by offering a clear and efficient method for managing channels and notifications.

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Pakistani internet slowdown: ongoing submarine cable issue

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Even after two weeks, the global submarine cable AAA-1 problem that was discovered on January 2 near Qatar has not been fixed, causing sluggish internet connection in several Pakistani towns.

According to a representative for Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), the issue has affected customers’ capacity to effectively access social media applications and browse the online. Even with initiatives to fix the problem, social networking sites still lag during busy times.

Internet traffic has been redirected via alternate channels to lessen the impact, and more capacity has been set up to stabilize the service.

The PTCL representative promised that “Internet service across the country is operating normally, and there will be no issues with web browsing,” noting that social media applications’ lag is common during

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