- Anthropic suggests ‘slowdown or pause’ on AI
- AI could soon begin to develop, company warns
- There have been mostly negative responses online
Even the giant companies at the forefront of AI are suggesting that it may be time to step back and think about where the technology is headed: Anthropic developer Claude has published a lengthy new blog post in which he suggests “a significant slowdown or pause” while we all breathe.
Written by Anthropic executives Marina Favaro and Jack Clark, the article focuses on the idea of AI development itself, known as “recursive self-improvement,” in which case it could slip away from us very quickly, as AI takes over the design and development of its own models and interfaces.
“We are not there yet and recursive self-improvement is not inevitable,” the post explains. “But it could happen sooner than most institutions are prepared for.” By next year, an AI model like Claude could be able to complete tasks that would take a human coder weeks, according to Anthropic calculations.
According to Anthropic’s internal testing, Claude is handling more code than ever before and is quickly getting better at writing code that works and can be understood by human engineers. In fact, Claude now finds bugs that Anthropic’s best programmers had previously missed.
While humans are still better at seeing the big picture and context outside of the current task, the blog post says, this is another aspect that AI may soon catch up to — even if that part is less clear. If and when that happens, AI could spiral out of our control, and that’s where proposals to freeze AI development come into play.
Growing anti-AI sentiment
Anthropic calls for global freeze on AI development from r/technology
“If it were possible to effectively slow the development of this technology to give us more time to deal with its immense implications, we think that would probably be a good thing,” the Anthropic team writes. “But if a slowdown simply allows less cautious players to catch up technologically, it could make everyone less safe.”
With that in mind, the blog post floats the idea of a “global coordination mechanism” to slow or pause the development of cutting-edge AI – which of course would require competitors like OpenAI and Google to promise not to try to advance in secret. During this pause, more of the future potential of AI and possible protective measures could be developed.
Anthropic says it will “host conversations” with governments, researchers and AI companies to see if it will be possible to curb development at this stage. If we don’t do this now, we risk losing this opportunity completely. That’s why Anthropic wants to ask these questions now.
In the flesh-and-blood world, notable anti-AI sentiment is growing – at least outside of Silicon Valley and coders. Online reactions to Anthropic’s post accused the company of wanting to protect its own market lead and generating hype around its upcoming IPO – although many share the same security concerns raised in the blog post.
“This is regulatory capture,” says one commenter, noting that it’s something AI companies do regularly. “They want to build a moat around their business.” Another Reddit post presents the scenario more vividly: “A wolf with a bloody mouth and engorged belly says it’s time to stop eating meat for a bit.”
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