This is the Guardian.

Today, why so many leaders in tech want us to press pause on AI?

It's been less than a year since we started talking on this podcast about artificial intelligence, about the possibilities it might bring us and the possible risks.

Last summer, we told you about Blake Lemoyne.

If you ask it, hey, Lambda, we're two Google engineers. Can you make the best argument that you are sentient so we can convince others with it?

He's an engineer who'd been developing Google's AI assistant. And as he was typing questions to Lambda, the chatbot he was helping develop, he got increasingly concerned at how sophisticated, even emotional, its responses were becoming.

He worried it'd taken on a life of its own.

In order to be capable of convincingly arguing that you are sentient, requires sentience.

Back then, this level of AI technology was out of reach for most of us, and perhaps the notion of it's getting out of control seemed farfetched too.

But in November, that changed.

When the tech firm OpenAI made its chatbot chat GPT free for anyone to use, and last month dropped its latest version GPT-4.

Alex Hurn, the Guardian's technology editor, spent a week letting it into his and his family's lives.

I could even give it a really complicated question about my personal circumstances going on holiday to Japan in July this year, with a two-year-old daughter with Down syndrome staying in the Asaksa neighborhood, and ask it to give me a series of event suggestions for the point of view of a British tourist, a British expert, and a Tokyoite local.

And it could.

I'm going to talk about some scary things these technologies can do, but that is wild to me.

And that's what I mean when I say this is going to be the iPhone of this decade.

This is not going to go away, and there is no chance that it doesn't become a part of everyone's daily lives in the next 10 years.

So remarkable are these developments that hundreds of leaders in the tech world, including Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple, and Elon Musk, have written an open letter asking for AI to be paused.

They say nothing should be developed beyond the capabilities of GPT-4 until we better understand what it might be able to do.

What are they really worried about? The danger of developing this technology at speed, or that they're being left behind?

From the Guardian, I'm Hannah Moore. Today in focus, has AI already got out of control?

Alex, it feels like at the moment so many people are starting to worry about how rapidly AI technology is improving and what that could mean for our lives.

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