‘Too little, too late’: Critics perplexed and suspicious of AI leaders’ call for a slowdown

From the Trump administration to AI experts, plans by the Anthropic boss to boost safety have spawned a largely negative response OpenAI boss and Elon Musk back slowdown on ‘reckless’ AI development Editorial: controlling AI – humanity cannot outsource its survival The safety debate that ignited when whistleblowers last week warned that the most advanced AI poses an existential threat to humanity should come with a health warning: side effects include whiplash.

It was only seven days ago that AI enthusiasts were cheerily toying with OpenAI’s newest model GPT-6 Astra which was marketed in part as a lifestyle tool to help people book tennis courts, run fashion companies and order takeaways.

By Wednesday, cutting edge AI started to look a lot less appealing when the resigning Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon warned “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade”.

Yes, he was talking about artificial super-intelligence – an as-yet-nonexistent version of the technology that outcompetes humans in most domains – but his comments, and the chorus of experts that echoed him, jangled plenty of nerves.

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