Elon Musk has issued a stark warning to the US government following a meeting with one of the Senate’s top political leaders today.
The Twitter and Tesla CEO was filmed leaving the Senate telling reporters he had just met Senator Chuck Schumer to talk about ‘AI and the economy’.
In a tweet, Musk confirmed that he was discussing the regulation of AI with Mr Schumer, who is leading efforts to introduce national rules on artificial intelligence.
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He said: “Met with [Senator Schumer] and many members of Congress about artificial intelligence regulation today.”
Musk continued: “That which affects safety of the public has, over time, become regulated to ensure that companies do not cut corners.
“AI has great power to good and evil. Better the former.”
Senator Schumer commented on the meeting to CNN, saying it was ‘very good’: “We talked about Buffalo (New York)—Tesla has a large plant in Buffalo. And we talked about AI.”
He added that he has drafted a ‘framework that outlines a new regulatory regime that would prevent potentially catastrophic damage to our country’.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1651443468638605313
The meeting between Mr Musk and some of the Senate’s top brass follows the publication of an open letter in March, in which Musk and over one thousand other tech leaders called for a stop to the training of advanced AI systems.
The letter said AI labs around the world are in an ‘out-of-control’ race: “Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks, and we must ask ourselves: […] Should we risk loss of control of our civilisation?”
It called for a halt to the training of AI systems ‘more powerful than GPT-4’ and called on governments to ‘step in’ if tech companies don’t abide.
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