Claim · 2023-03-22 · publication · Stated in source · Supported

The Future of Life Institute open letter of 22 March 2023 states that AI labs are in an out-of-control race to build digital minds that no one can reliably control, and asks whether to risk loss of control of civilisation.

One recorded claim. The claim panel gives its qualification, the source passages with their place in each source, and how it was checked.

What it connects

Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter → bears on → Existential risk from misalignment or loss of control

Where it appears

Arguments about catastrophic risk from advanced AI →

Claim and evidence

Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letterbears on ↓Existential risk from misalignment or loss of control

Machine-checked, not reviewed by an editorStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 2023-03-22 · publication Records dated 2023 →
Role: Context
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction
Missing element: It states the outcome as questions and names no mechanism by which systems pursuing goals at odds with human interests would escape control; it does not mention extinction.

Scope and limitsThe letter poses loss of control and replacement as questions and calls for a six-month pause; it records what the letter says, not the views of each signatory.

The evidence 02

primary sourceSupports the claim

Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

Future of Life Institute (futureoflife.org) · 2023-03-22

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

“AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.”

Location in source Paragraph 1

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-10-31

Source details and check notes

Authors: Future of Life Institute
Version: Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29 (SHA-256 83e3fb8e4b7ede9bc1b61e075b08ffca987432125df51ebe5eb568f7b6137b06). Current letter page, with footnotes, signatory list and later site material (including a 2025 statement banner), not quoted.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-29
Language: English (en)
Attribution: Future of Life Institute, “Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter”, 2023-03-22.
Reuse: No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Candidate pack passage, arguments about catastrophic risk from advanced AI (research/risk-debate). The quotation (29 words) matched the text retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29. Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. No human editorial review.

primary sourceSupports the claim

Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

Future of Life Institute (futureoflife.org) · 2023-03-22

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

“Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?”

Location in source Paragraph 2

How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher

Machine-checked · 2026-10-31

Source details and check notes

Authors: Future of Life Institute
Version: Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29 (SHA-256 83e3fb8e4b7ede9bc1b61e075b08ffca987432125df51ebe5eb568f7b6137b06). Current letter page, with footnotes, signatory list and later site material (including a 2025 statement banner), not quoted.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-29
Language: English (en)
Attribution: Future of Life Institute, “Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter”, 2023-03-22.
Reuse: No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution.
Check notes: Candidate pack passage, arguments about catastrophic risk from advanced AI (research/risk-debate). The quotation (23 words) matched the text retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29. Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. No human editorial review.

Status and meaning

Editorial status. Not reviewed by an editor. An exploratory record that no editor has accepted. This status does not say whether a person has read any linked passage. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.

Relation. A passage of the document bears on the proposition without meeting its criterion; the record names the missing element. It is not an articulation and implies no influence.

Date. The DAIR statement gives 28 March 2023 as the publication day.

Record ID rd-r08-fli-2023-pause-letter