Apple Computers co-founder Steve Wozniak, SpaceX founder and Twitter owner Elon Musk, and a host of other tech leaders have signed on to an open letter asking that all artificial intelligence labs immediately pause the training of AI systems for at least six months.
"Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable," said the letter issued by the Future of Life Institute.
The concern is that the systems are coming up with human-competitive intelligence and pose a profound risk to humanity.
"AI stresses me out," Musk said earlier this month.
Fox commentator Douglas Murray calls the letter "extraordinary."
"We could be in trouble," he says. "This is unprecedented."
The letter asks for a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI that would ensure that it remains under human control.
"This has been coming on us for 25 years now, so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that the treadmill of technology is running faster than we humans can run," Murray recently told "Fox & Friends."
Talk host and reporter Richard Randall says it is time to pay attention.
"I've got to believe that Elon Musk knows a lot more about this and the dangers of it," says Randall. "The fact that he's saying that there ought to be at least a six-month moratorium on this concerns me greatly."
He warns that AI could soon be replacing people in highly skilled jobs.
"You could honestly go forward with newspapers and television programs and law review articles and medical journals without any human input at all, with all of it being generated by AI," Randall poses. "No one would know the difference."
Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, warns that the world is witnessing the birth of "the nuclear age."
