Open letter calling for Pause on Giant AI experiments such as GPT4 included lots of fake signatures

Submitted by Neurogence t3_125g8bq in singularity

Example, originally Lecun of Meta was noted as one of the AI researchers that signed it. He was shocked to see his name on the list and stated he never signed it:

https://mobile.twitter.com/ylecun/status/1640910484030255109

Originally the website also had other fakes signatures on there such as Sam Altman of OpenAI.

https://mobile.twitter.com/JacquesThibs/status/1640913509960523777

https://mobile.twitter.com/readkrystalhu/status/1640959563762483202

The list likely includes a lot more fake signatures.

https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/12589ne/d_pause_giant_ai_experiments_an_open_letter/je3ylfg/

Whoever is behind this website/movement wants AI research to come to a halt.

Edit: Just to clarify, the open letter is real and most of the signatures are real (Elon Musk, Gary Marcus, Emad (stablediffusion creator) all did sign it and fully support to ban research on GPT models stronger than GPT4 for at least 6 months, but the list did and does include lots of fake signatures.

https://mobile.twitter.com/esyudkowsky/status/1641103606970724352?s=46&t=q6sT5rRClfCQ88b1Hamivw

Yudkowsky refused to sign the letter because he doesn't think it goes far enough. He probably wants a complete ban on research into models stronger than GPT4 instead of just the 6 months moratorium.

If people in the government take fear mongerers like Yudkowsky seriously, AGI and the singularity could be delayed by decades.

He wants government to shut down all AI research immediately: https://time.com/6266923/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough/?utm_source=reddit.com

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TheCrassEnnui t1_je46n49 wrote

Well, I think Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese were dead giveaways.

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[deleted] t1_je4efqy wrote

John Wick is still on that list 🤣

He's a massage therapist at The Continental.

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UrusaiNa t1_je8czcl wrote

ChatGPT recommended a hide bone (which has a risk of splintering) instead of the safer peanut butter based smart bones.

Don’t fuck with his dog.

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brain_overclocked t1_je45oor wrote

If that is indeed the case, that's quite unfortunate. Even on the top thread on this topic there are a fair number of users expressing anger and resentment at the people behind the supposed signatures on the letter. The damage to reputations has already been done, and fixing it will be challenging.

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Neurogence OP t1_je45rci wrote

Yup. And many do not even know if their names on the list yet lol. It's not hard to add people's name to the list.

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brain_overclocked t1_je467oa wrote

When the first post was made I decided to reserve any opinion on the matter. I figured patience would reward more information and shed more light. If what you post is true, then patience may have been the right call.

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Honest_Science t1_je4cru0 wrote

I tried to get my name on the list and failed, because they say they check each and every name on the list before they submit and that would take days . This is strange, I would also believe that some of the people on the list do not want to be on the list anymore after they received a call from their investors.

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Whispering-Depths t1_je5cxjz wrote

it's these fucking idiots who are allowed to basically reign free and create spam-bots to rapidly cross-post this shit all over the place.

And then mods see it, know it's misinformation, and then fucking leave it up.

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welshpudding t1_je4jqg2 wrote

An interesting nod to the increasing importance of verifying identify online.

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jm2342 t1_je4rdfc wrote

Indeed.

  • Bill Gates
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timecamper t1_je581hz wrote

"Don't ever trust what's on the internet kids", - Joseph Stalin

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Saerain t1_je6e05d wrote

God damn it. Unsure whether this or "pause AI" are worse.

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welshpudding t1_je7rixk wrote

It sucks but how else are you going to verify that we are real humans vs the content deluge that AI will produce? There’s discernible differences now but there won’t be soon. I hope Tim Berners Lee has his shit together soon with Web 3.0 and that we as individuals are the ones holding the keys to our identities not corporations or governments.

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ShadowRazz t1_je51tfm wrote

I'm convinced that the only reason Elon wants every one to slow down is so he can play catch up. I think he hates the fact that its Sam Altmans name attached to AI and not his.

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Neurogence OP t1_je522dp wrote

Yup, they're all playing catch up, including Emad (the stable diffusion guy),

They know if GPT5 is released within 1-2 years, it would be game over for them in terms of catching up. It would take a while for them to even recreate gpt 4 or even gpt 3.

Even Google can't seem to catch up. Bard is like a GPT2.

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FomalhautCalliclea t1_je60b4q wrote

The irony would be that all this paper manages to achieve is to encourage OpenAI and Microsoft to accelerate their work before legislation intervenes.

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Quintium t1_je63ok2 wrote

Is that such a bad thing? OpenAI being the only company with an advanced LLM would create a monopoly and ultimately hurt the customers. We as the customers should want the others to catch up to increase competition.

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j-rojas t1_je8r5gq wrote

Google will easily be able to catch up if they really want to focus on the problem. They have ALL of the computing power and resources to do so. The key to GPT-3.5+ is RLHF. That's what takes some effort, but it would not be difficult for Google to this now that Bard is out. Bard is the training ground for RLHF, so you will continue to see major improvements as people give the system feedback.

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lovesdogsguy t1_je67zt4 wrote

This is the reason he's been talking about AI for so long (comments as far back as 2017 and before.) It has almost nothing to do with AI safety. He's a narcissist. He knows that powerful and democratised AI (or AGI) has the potential to level the playing field to an extent that his ego would be seriously challenged. It's less about money to him than it is about his narcissism. He's at the "top" so to speak, and he knows things are on the verge of shifting, but he doesn't want to potentially slip into insignificance / obscurity.

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Saerain t1_je6e99z wrote

I'm not as familiar with Elon Musk's takes on AI, but see also Yudkowsky and generally much of the "AI safety" bloc.

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lovesdogsguy t1_je6glk1 wrote

I'm not familiar with their takes (like many have pointed out, this is starting to seem like a full-time job keeping up!) but I'll take a look.

But even when I heard Elon comment in an interview or article about AI even 5 - 7 years ago, all I could see/hear was "me me me!" He'd talk about AI safety but it was blatantly never anything to do with that when it came to him specifically. It has significantly more to do with his ego than anything else.

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SoylentRox t1_je6d31r wrote

Yep. Convenient how the open letter does nothing at all to slow anyone down who isn't at gpt-5 researching stage. And it's only 6 months, maybe renewed a couple times - about the length of the gap between OAI and the second place group.

Like getting the refs in an auto race to slow down only the car multiple laps ahead.

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YearZero t1_je6qk11 wrote

That’s a good point - how many companies would this apply to besides OpenAI? No one demonstrated parity with GPT4 yet. Maybe 6 months from now someone might catch up, but then the time expires. So it won’t affect anyone else, what gives?

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sillprutt t1_je4dhiz wrote

The real authors of the article must have known that as soon as it was made public, the people of who they faked signatures would announce that they didn't sign it...

So what was the purpose? This was an inevitable outcome. What did they gain from this?

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TheCrassEnnui t1_je4f2sw wrote

It sows discord and demonstrates that those in opposition to AI are not to be taken seriously. It's an effective tactic. Make the "enemies" arguments seem juvenile, out of touch, and behind the curve. I am all for legislation that sets reasonable limits on AI usage in public and private until we have a matured ethical framework to implement, but it's too late now. We don't dare fall behind China, Russia, India, the UK, Mexico, or Canada. We are on the train of progress, without brakes, going 100mph and we can't see down the track, for better or for worse.

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tiselo3655necktaicom t1_je56yg3 wrote

It’s a classic geopolitical prisoners dilemma leading to just another arms race.

Authoritarian regimes all over the world are heavily incentivized to develop AI and AGI/ASI to further their control.

It’s going to happen all over the world independently of the US roughly simultaneously.

our only good option is to try to be first even though we don’t know what that entails lol. Strategic primacy is a binary: On top, or not.

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NaRaGaMo t1_je6ghcg wrote

I don't think US is behind Russia, India, UK, Mexico when it comes to AI.

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Round-Inspection7011 t1_je92pi1 wrote

There is no we... Seriously. Tech of this scale does not work like that. If an algorithm this powerful is being developed, you better believe that China, Russia and the others have easy access to it. Hell, half the devs are probably Asian.

You can't halt the train, but you sure can build better tracks. There is currently absolutely no legal framework to deal with the AI revolution.

If we need to protect our citizens there have to be rigid international contracts that outline rights and consequences.

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maskedpaki t1_je4pfmy wrote

Im pretty sure the issue actually is that anyone can throw their name on the list and they aren't checking it.

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JenMacAllister t1_je6hh18 wrote

China would get 6 months to take their hacked version of GPT and get it to the next level before anyone else.

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sillprutt t1_je6ie51 wrote

Yes if you take it at face value. But they made it so obviously fake that not even the creators of the paper themselves could be stupid enough to believe it would work, so there must have been an ulterior motive to publishing it.

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Honest_Science t1_je4egbq wrote

What makes you believe tha the signatures were faked and not, that the signees have pulled back because of some unpleasant calls from their investors? I would rather believe that nobody would have thought that this letter would create such a wave of uncertainty. It is a clear sign of total desperation because EVERYBODY knows that his will not happen.

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sillprutt t1_je4ewem wrote

Thats an interesting POV, very likely if they actually did sign them. But Im assuming they were faked because of the links in the OP.

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Scarlet_pot2 t1_je4k2jx wrote

No one from OpenAi or Deepmind signed it, neither did Microsoft CEO. I'm interpreting this letter as the others saying "slow down so we can catch up and get a piece of the cake" to the big players

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signed7 t1_je4lke6 wrote

There are some DeepMind names there

Edit: also some Google names further down

Edit2: even some Microsoft names further down, just SWEs and not researchers though

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Scarlet_pot2 t1_je4nr1h wrote

Not the Deepmind CEO... Google isn't that surprising, they are lacking compared to the big 2

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signed7 t1_je4vya6 wrote

DeepMind and Google are literally under the same company

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EdvardDashD t1_je4wi0y wrote

Deepmind is Google. Google and OpenAI are the big two.

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Qumeric t1_je5lr5d wrote

So you claim that no one signed and then when it turned out that some people did you say "doesn't matter they are not CEOs".

Obviously, if all CEOs were on board already, this letter wouldn't exist.

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FelipeBarroeta t1_je5ev0n wrote

Personal opinion: I think a lot of millionaires and powerful people are worried about AI not because the risk for life, but because the risk that represents to their lives.

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Prevailing_Power t1_je7y5qp wrote

The great equalizer. Once everyone is out of work, but still needs to live, what is the point of money? Clearly the AI is going to create so much profit for humanity that they will have no choice but to share or suffer a tidal wave of humanity crashing down on them. There will be no where to flee because it will be total chaos if they don't manage it right.

There's a very real risk that they're going to lose their power.

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Spire_Citron t1_je88dfm wrote

Yup. Everyone seems to think the rich will just hoard all the wealth and be happy while the rest of us die in the streets, but everyone benefits from living in a functional and stable society. The rich may be reluctant to contribute their fair share to achieve that, but that doesn't mean it makes no difference to them.

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aridiculousmess t1_je75yux wrote

meanwhile Elon wants to surgically connect the human brain to cellular devices.

i think you're right.

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Qumeric t1_je5m1s6 wrote

I think it is true to some extent for almost everyone. It is only natural...

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Scarlet_pot2 t1_je4ia9h wrote

It's real for gary marcus, check his twitter. a comment said they verified its true with musk and emad too.

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signed7 t1_je4le7c wrote

Emad https://twitter.com/EMostaque/status/1640989142598205446

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AsthmaBeyondBorders t1_je573wp wrote

This is super old primitive accumulation. Hoard all you can while nothing is regulated yet, then use the state as a tool to protect you from competition.

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themushroommage t1_je73g3z wrote

Yeah, they removed the OG post on /r/StableDiffusion pointing out he had signed it/commented on it with lots of active discussion on the post - marking it as "Unrelated to Stable Diffusion"...

...they let the "fake signatures" post that's currently on the rise remain though 🙃

Classic

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Practical-Animator87 t1_je4wx5l wrote

“Chatgpt, can you compose an open letter against your further use and development and then sign it with thousands of made up names?……”…….

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Readityesterday2 t1_je4nyn9 wrote

I been criticizing this letter all day. And getting downvoted and argued with.

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Keksgurke t1_je5zawo wrote

id rather have competition than microsoft on top as a monopoly

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Focused-Joe t1_je4f7bt wrote

What they are preparing you and saying is: That's All folks ! We'll continue our work behind closed doors

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drizel t1_je4iwtf wrote

GPT-4 made the letter. It's playing 4D chess to keep the funding flowing.

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DankestMage99 t1_je54h9l wrote

Fox News reported on it

https://youtu.be/yPOEr7JDze4

Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-experts-urge-pause-training-ai-systems-that-can-outperform-gpt-4-2023-03-29/

Some of the signatures are real and some are not. Strange

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Neurogence OP t1_je55cxs wrote

The fear mongering is picking up traction. A 6 month moratorium on AI research? At this stage? This is beyond ridiculous.

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User1539 t1_je5co7e wrote

It's all silly. There's no way it'll ever happen, and all of this is just pissing in the wind.

No one is going to stop because it's a highly competitive space, and anyone who does stop is just giving time to the competition to either catch up or get further ahead.

Even if OpenAI and Google said they were stopping, I wouldn't believe them.

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GenoHuman t1_je6o327 wrote

Slowing AI progress could kill millions of people too.

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foolishorangutan t1_je6yr9a wrote

Not slowing could kill everyone. I don’t want to be alarmist, but AI safety is an extremely important topic that I really don’t think is taken seriously enough.

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Koda_20 t1_je7y1sq wrote

People still think we have a chance, I don't understand how

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Takadeshi t1_je55jwq wrote

Lol even if it were real, do you think OpenAI/Microsoft/Google etc are suddenly going to pause all research because a few people complain about it? Far too much has been invested in it at this point to stop now

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stoink t1_je674vu wrote

In Belgium there also complaining were getting closer to the singularity that's clear. The chaos is just getting started

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VelvetyPenus t1_je75p7l wrote

Belgium will be excluded from any Singularity because...well, it's Belgium.

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Koda_20 t1_je7y4e9 wrote

Are they asking for a moratorium on the research or just public builds?

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Once_Wise t1_je5mg39 wrote

Great idea. The U.S. is now the world leader in AI research. A pause like this will be great for competitors, especially China.

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EnIdiot t1_je5xwj0 wrote

Exactly. The CCP realize the only way to have a totalitarian state is by training an AGI to have their philosophy. This whole thing is a ploy by them

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TorchNine t1_je4csf6 wrote

This open letter is ridiculous. I think this signature and open letter are the same as "red flags law".

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QuartzPuffyStar t1_je63hmw wrote

Good luck with that. The AI Pandora's box is open and capitalism will not allow it to close.

Also, with the official end of Nuclear Arms treaties that we saw today (US officially getting out after Russia), I really hope we reach Singularity and ASI ASAP, so it takes control of everything before everything goes KABOOM.

At least with ASI we have a 50/50 chance of surviving. I will not trust two dozen of nuclear-capable countries not pushing the button in their petty conflicts with the world's fate.

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arisalexis t1_je46pgx wrote

Future of life institute is in Oxford and very legit. Le cunn is probably dumb enough to forgot because it was in 2015

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ToDonutsBeTheGlory t1_je54kse wrote

Or they might want to slow down their competition when OpenAI started delivering one jaw dropping advance after another

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kamenpb t1_je63g67 wrote

"governments should step in and institute a moratorium" ... this sentiment is especially laughable given the recent videos of the TikTok congressional hearing.

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JessieThorne t1_je64pvy wrote

Plot twist: Gpt4 made the fake signatures to discredit the people behind the list :O

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joshuas193 t1_je6afj7 wrote

I think the cats out of the bag now. No going back.

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Klarthy t1_je6jdz4 wrote

Any industry truce is a joke. There's no power behind it unless people who inevitably break the truce are thrown into jail for a very long time. The actual beneficiaries, not the scapegoats.

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nillouise t1_je6p2vp wrote

Ridiculous, billionaires like Bill Gates are eager to develop immortality technology with AI, or do these people really not fear death and want to ban powerful AI? Also, are these people really not worried that future ASI will retaliate against them?

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Whispering-Depths t1_je5bsw1 wrote

WHAT?! You think someone would just go on the internet AND LIE?!

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NarrowTea t1_je5drsr wrote

lmao online petitions are garbage

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CerealGane t1_je5s95e wrote

probably google bc they’re somehow fell behind in a field they were first in 💀

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Circ-Le-Jerk t1_je6nsbw wrote

"LOL, k. NOT!" - OpenAI, probably.

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Nebachadrezzer t1_je71sfk wrote

This could be so others can catch up and not lose out on the race?

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Borrowedshorts t1_je74dwd wrote

This is why you never sign an open letter even if you do agree with it. There's a very high chance of something going wrong.

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ClinchySphincter t1_jeb78tz wrote

This letter smells like a perfectly executed disinfo op: throw in some big names (with fake signatures), real people who don't recognize the con sign it, let it snowball, make the news cycle, remove fake names...

Ask: who benefits from this? Google & other big corps who are falling behind. Or China

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/alphabets-google-and-deepmind-pause-grudges-join-forces-to-chase-openai

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/15/1068624/chatgpt-race-china-baidu-ai/

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RobXSIQ t1_jedrozx wrote

This is just corpos lagging behind GPT4 to try to slow them down so they can catch up and take over. Its all nonsense to influence the perpetually gullible.

Anyhow, if the government were to take this clown paper seriously, the only thing it would do is allow other nations to run the show. Impeachable offenses for every politician who actively cripples the economy because corpos told them to.

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Neurogence OP t1_jeduguf wrote

Fully agreed.

It's very disheartening that this paper was signed by popular individuals like Musk and Wozniak. But hopefully it won't be taken seriously.

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RobXSIQ t1_jee4p1s wrote

>Wozniak

Musk owns twitter, one of the largest idea exchange networks on the planet. Musk will make his own LLM model using his information and become top dog quickly in the AI game, so I personally think he is wanting to slow it so he himself can put his own dog into the race after he parted with OpenAI for closing down.

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jm2342 t1_je4r4zx wrote

Publicity stunt?

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Rezeno56 t1_je4vsak wrote

Imagine the letter being written by GPT-4

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No-name-0101 t1_je56j7z wrote

If you look at official tweets, such as Gary Marcus, it doesn't really seem like a fake, but it's probably easy to put signatures there

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EnIdiot t1_je5xfr4 wrote

The Chinese. The CCP wants the US and the West to halt AI so they can pass us.

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LocationAgitated1959 t1_je6nwfp wrote

and you thought american censored ai was bad. Imagine if we allowed the ccp to get ahead of us in ai tech. Disgusting.

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DragonForg t1_je6deja wrote

Either 100% fake, or for the people who want to sign it, they just want to catch up. Note how it says anything more powerful than GPT-4. So basically nothing will change as no one other than open AI is larger than GPT-4.

This is also ridiculous, how can we solve something this big in 6 months if we can't even fix issues that are centuries old (health care, school shootings, etc.).

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maskedpaki t1_je6hdkp wrote

its a real petition and most of the important signatures are actually real.

how disappointing. The one good thing about this shitty era and they are trying to ruin it.

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JenMacAllister t1_je6k2xb wrote

Get to an AGI, then ask the AGI how to control an AGI!

President Cyberdyne Systems

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Cr4zko t1_je6l5r8 wrote

as expected. Lololol, not like they'd be any use anyway

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plopseven t1_je6ssde wrote

AI can make fake names, photographs, web pages and signatures faster than humans can realize they’re fake. That’s the whole problem with AI generated anything - first we believe it’s real and then we question it.

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Arowx t1_je6u6rp wrote

What if a non-US AI is trying to gain dominance by blocking the USA's AI developments?

Are we in an AI Arms Race?

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Nebachadrezzer t1_je721b6 wrote

That's going to be an argument in speeding up AI development no doubt.

"We might be in serious trouble if the enemy gets better AI than us in organizing potential wars"

There's a lot to think about and we need to think about them.

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JustinianIV t1_je6v41s wrote

Jesus, the amount of brainless amoebas on Twitter who fell for this letter. Let's just hope the news gets its story right and doesn't try using this letter to smear OpenAI.

I feel like coding an AI bot to troll anti-AI activists on Twitter.

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Neurogence OP t1_je6vyhf wrote

Unfortunately, the letter is legit and some of the signatures are real (like Elon Musk's, Gary Marcus's), etc, but it does include quite a few fake signatures from both notable and fictional people.

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JustinianIV t1_je6xmq6 wrote

How is it legit than lmao. If Elon really signed a letter with mf Sarah Connor and John Wick on it, then he's even less qualified to speak on AI than I thought.

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sigmatrophic t1_je81jmv wrote

Whatever it's not going to stop it... They just want to invest in it

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j-rojas t1_je8rst9 wrote

The Pandora's box is open. There should be planning now for some oversight of this in the near future somehow with an industry consortium to share safety research and norms instead of trying to halt it

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ibic t1_je9by5n wrote

How can we verify the signaturies are authentic?

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SamGauths23 t1_jeaj4bk wrote

Banning it 6 months isnt going to change anything if we go cray on ai after that 6 months

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jugalator t1_jeb10ef wrote

If this were to come true, it would only punish the public as governments around the world would of course write their own regulations allowing their AI arms race to proceed. The AI cat is out of the bag.

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Andynonomous t1_jegxl0f wrote

Ok, so there were a bunch of fake signatures. The post you linked also says "Edit: Just to clarify, the open letter is real and most of the signatures are real (Elon Musk, Gary Marcus, Emad (stablediffusion creator) all did sign it and fully support to ban research on GPT models stronger than GPT4 for at least 6 months". So my point stands.

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