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Sitting on the front lawn of my cottage in the forest sanctuary of Binsar in the Kumaon hills, I am struggling to pick my way between the arguments on whether the further development of Artificial General Intelligence should be paused or not.

Regular readers will know I write an occasional column from the remote fastness of this sanctuary. My cottage can only be approached by foot. The nearest market is a 45-minute drive and I have to haul up the provisions required for the duration of my stay; there is no grid electricity (I have installed solar) and no running water (I source rainwater from tanks). But there is connectivity. I have access to 4G telephony and WiFi. I am therefore able to keep track of worldly affairs.

Were I in Mumbai or Delhi, the debate triggered by the release of the neural language model ChatGPT 4 would have engaged my intellect. But I am not in those cities. I am instead perched in splendid isolation I forgot to add my nearest neighbour is a 20-minute walk on a promontory overlooking dense oak forests with the Himalayan peaks, Nanda Devi and Trishul in the foreground, the twitter of birds as the only ambient background sound and the words of the Nobel Prize prize-winning Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, man is but an insignificant creature of creation reverberating in my brain. It is not my mind driving my thoughts. It is my senses. And that is why I am not sure where to pitch my flag.

I have read excerpts of the letter coordinated by the Future of Life Institute and signed by apparently thousands of scientists, technocrats, businessmen, academics and others (the exact number of signatories is not known as there are many forged signatures ) calling for a six-month pause in the further development of neural language models. The signatories include Elon Musk who, ironically, was a co-founder of Open AI, the inventor of ChatGPT, but who sold his shares after a tiff with the other founders Steve Wozniak, the cofounder of Apple and the Israeli Philosopher and author of Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari. The central message of the letter is that further unconstrained development of such language models could create human competitive intelligence that if not circumscribed by governance protocols could pose a profound risk to humanity. Further work should therefore be halted until such protocols are in place.

This letter reminded me of the comment made by Robert Oppenheimer, the Director of the Manhattan Project that designed the atomic bomb when he became aware of the destructive potential of his creation. Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. (a loose translation of a verse from the Bhagwad Gita). Oppenheimer spent much of the rest of his professional life lobbying to contain the fallout.

I have also read the counters to this letter. Many have dismissed it as paranoiac hype. Some have argued that this is not an unexpected reaction. Every technological transformation has triggered opposition by vested interests. The abbott Johannes Trithemius opposed the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1436 because he thought it would make monks lazy. The word of God needs to be interpreted by priests not spread about like Dung, he said. The industrial Luddites of the early 19th century protested the mechanisation of the knitting loom out of concern for the livelihood of skilled weavers. More contemporaneous, many have forewarned against the adverse impact on jobs, data privacy and individual rights of the digital revolution. There is much in these reactions, but had they led to the stoppage of further technological developments, society would have been worse off. On that, there is no doubt. Some have also adduced the geopolitical argument that a pause will grant China an open sesame on AI and that would be a setback for the rules-based, liberal, international order.

I reflect on these arguments but my thoughts are not clear.

At one level, I am drawn to the implicit message in the letter that enough is enough. That whilst human ingenuity has indeed improved the nature of our daily lives, it has also brought us to the brink of a planetary catastrophe. There is no doubt that one reason I am able to look across verdant hills is that as a declared sanctuary, Binsar, has been protected from the ravages of industrialisation. I am also concerned (without being able to put a finger on the precise reasons for this concern) that if the motive force driving the phenomenally talented is personal profits rather than public welfare and if there are no protocols or guard rails, then through the self-reinforcing momentum of creativity, a situation may well arise wherein the creator loses control over his creation. Decision making would then pass onto the levers of inanimate, albeit intelligent machines. The ramifications could be frightening.

At another level, however, I wonder how in the absence of technological progress we can get back on the rails of sustainable development. One reason the world is still hopeful of tackling global warming is that technology has rendered clean energy a competitive alternative to fossil fuels. Further technological progress should enable the sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere. That would be a transformational step in the journey towards decarbonisation. I also wonder about the practicality of getting individuals to pause their innate instinct to experiment, innovate and create. Would that not require upending the liberal values that place individual rights at the centre of public governance?

As I said, I am not clear where to pitch my flag. But I sense the real problem is not the unbridled momentum of AI. It is the international communitys inability to look beyond narrow jingoistic interests towards a collaborative effort to address the problems of the global commons. Pause on AI will not solve this underlying problem. On the contrary, it may exacerbate it by diminishing technologies talismanic power.

The writer is Chairman, Center for Social and Economic Progress

The Indian Express (P) Ltd

First published on: 01-05-2023 at 07:44 IST

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Vikram Mehta writes: Why we cant pause AI - The Indian Express