By: Professor Ioannis Pitas

Can artificial intelligence (AI) research stop, even temporarily? In my view, no, as AI is the response of humanity to a global society and physical world of ever-increasing complexity. As the physical and social complexity increases processes are very deep and seem relentless, AI and citizen morphosis are our only hope to have a smooth transition from the current Information Society to a Knowledge Society. Else, we may face a catastrophic social implosion.

Maybe we reached the limits of AI research being engineered primarily by Big Tech companies, while treating powerful AI systems (like LLMs) almost as marvelous black boxes, whose functionality (the why?) is very poorly understood, both due to lack of access to technical details and due to the huge AI system complexity. Naturally, this lack of knowledge and related confusion as to the nature of human and machine intelligence entails very serious social risks.

It seems that the Open Letter regarding AI development reflects both welcomed genuine concerns on the social risks as well as financial concerns on risk management related, e.g., to future AI investments or the possibility of massive expensive lawsuits (in an unregulated and un-legislated environment) in case things go wrong.

However, I doubt if the proposal for a six-month ban on large-scale experiments is the solution. It is impractical for geopolitical reasons and can bring too few benefits, particularly if LLM training is targeted, rather than LLM deployment.

Furthermore, the melodramatic tone of this Open Letter can only enhance technophobia in the wider population.

On the other hand, scientific views discounting LLM value (e.g., like the ones expressed by Chomsky) are old-fashioned (reminiscent of perceptron rejection by Minsky and Papert) and not productive either.

Of course, AI research can and should become different: more open, democratic and scientific.

Professor Ioannis Pitas is the director of the artificial intelligence and information analysis (AIIA) lab at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) and management board chair of the AI Doctoral Academy (AIDA).

Read More: Should We Pause AI Development?