They want a 6 month pause on training these large language models. It's utopian thinking, not consistent with capitalism.

Ever hear about what happens when a new batch of powerful heroin would hit the streets, killing some junkies via overdose? The other junkies go looking for that shit, because something bad isn't going to happen to *them*, right? Tragedy is for the other poor bastards.

That's what's at work here. Capitalism doesn't allow them to slow down with AI development, no matter what the risk is. In fact, for VCs and C-suite tech company execs (basically the same tribe), risk is exactly what they want. Risk equals reward.

They don't believe that the risk is existential for the human race. They can't believe that. If they admit this possibility, they open the door to introducing ethics and morality into their business decisions, which in this case they cannot do, since they fear their competitors will not be similarly bound.

There's no slowing down. Nobody is pausing anything, regardless of how good an idea it might be.

This isn't even taking into account the military and intelligence services, who are almost certainly investing mega millions into LLM development. You can bet that the NSA is balls-deep in this field.

All this letter does is pour more chum into the water.