AI Pause

Noun · Hacker Culture

Definitions

  1. A proposed moratorium on the development of AI systems beyond a certain capability threshold (often pegged to GPT-4-level or above), most prominently advocated in the March 2023 open letter organized by the Future of Life Institute and signed by figures including Elon Musk and Yoshua Bengio.

    In plain English: A proposal to temporarily stop building more powerful AI systems until we better understand and can manage the risks.

    Example: "The AI pause letter got thousands of signatures but training runs kept scaling the whole time — turns out an open letter isn't legally binding."

Related Terms