Pause Giant AI Experiments

The Pause Letter was issued on March 22, 2023 by the Future of Life Institute, organized primarily by Tegmark, and signed by researchers, executives, and public intellectuals including Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Yuval Harari, Stuart Russell, and thousands of AI scientists. It called on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least six months the training of systems more powerful than GPT-4, during which safety protocols, governance frameworks, and research on alignment would catch up to capability. The letter crystallized the argument Tegmark had been making for years: the wisdom side of the AI race was falling behind the capability side, and without a deliberate pause, the gap would widen past the point of adequate response. The pause did not occur. The letter's failure became part of Tegmark's evidence that voluntary coordination among AI labs was structurally inadequate.