Fiddling while AI burns

As Congress focuses on what to do about TikTok, leaders in the tech industry have cautioned against a far more expansive risk that has a direct bearing on the role of tech in our daily lives. Data gathered by firms such as TikTok underpin advanced AI tools like the commercially-available GPT-4 large language model (LLM) and support research into next-generation models like GPT-5 and beyond. A host of prominent technologists and academics recently released an open letter on TechCrunch urging a six-month pause on research into all AI systems more powerful than GPT-4, underscoring that the AI systems currently being…