A pause is a terrible idea.

The problem will NOT be solved by a six month pause.  I believe that it will just provide comfort for the Luddites who fear the pace of change and believe that this would help (which it won’t at all).  Also a thinktank that reportedly includes Elon Musk as a major funder (whose various enterprises are very much at risk from the AI juggernaut) is not an honest broker in this suggestion.  However, the letter – to its credit – has sparked a much needed conversation about the risks and potential of AI and what are the appropriate governance practices.

A better suggestion is NOT a PAUSE.  It is the parallel development of principles, practices, rule, and, yes, laws and regulations.  This has been done well before.  We have done the same thing with previous major innovations like fertility, genetic testing, the genome project, sometimes copyright, etc.  However, we continue to sometimes fail at privacy, collection of personal information, user rights, confidentiality, women’s right to choose, Indigenous, BIPOC, mis and disinformation, and other principled rights issues like Trans, LGBT, drag queen, and others.

We need to ask ourselves these questions:

• What is the clear deliverable?  How do we finance the work? How do we set a deadline to apply urgency to our first draft?
• Who should be involved in the conversation? What voices need to be heard? (equity, diversity, language, status, and more come to mind)
• How do we architect a way to explore and come to conclusions? A Blue-Ribbon Committee seems inadequate and naïve.
• Who is in the target audience for the results?
• How do we ensure a feedback loop and public consultation principle?

So, let’s put together an entity that works on AI developments from a societal impact lens in parallel to developments.  This entity needs to:

1. build the team.
2. build a roadmap to inventory, define, and address the concerns and real challenges.
3. build a good framework to view the facets of the issues faced by users and society in the AI space.
4. involve diverse people and other stakeholders on a global basis – this is not an issue that can be solved only at the national level, or indeed just in an English or a western context.
5. allow new innovations to be released to inform these discussions, as they reach launch or, at least, testability, as opposed to reviewing AI+AGI through the lens of the present.
6. educate the government players in the AI/AGI space – including scientists, politicians, policy analysts, legal minds, and more.
7. educate the public about AI/AGI and their rights.
8. ultimately build a manifesto of principles that gets debated, adapted, and grows to be adopted by researchers, organizations, and, sometimes, governments in rules, regulations, and laws.

And that takes longer than a six month pause.

On principle, I don’t want to see a demand that we “pause” science, or creativity, or invention, or releases.  Pausing science and discovery is an impossible task.   We also haven’t consciously explored the long term risks and potential in a thoughtful way yet.  Indeed, science fiction utopia and dystopia aside, there are a great number of facets of this transformational technology with which to apply many lenses.

It is an exciting opportunity to do this.  Let’s get it right.

The following link contains more links to help you read up on this.

Everyone wants better A.I. governance, but a lot of people didn’t like Elon Musk’s A.I. pause letter

https://links.newsletter.fortune.com/e/evib