An artificial intelligence expert with more than two decades of experience studying AI safety said an open letter calling for six-month moratorium on developing powerful AI systems does not go far enough.

Eliezer Yudkowsky, a decision theorist at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, wrote in a recent op-ed that the six-month "pause" on developing "AI systems more powerful than GPT-4" called for by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and hundreds of other innovators and experts understates the "seriousness of the situation." He would go further, implementing a moratorium on new large AI learning models that is "indefinite and worldwide." 

The letter, issued by the Future of Life Institute and signed by more than 1,000 people, including Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, argued that safety protocols need to be developed by independent overseers to guide the future of AI systems.

"Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable," the letter said. Yudkowsky believes this is insufficient.

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"The key issue is not "human-competitive" intelligence (as the open letter puts it); it’s what happens after AI gets to smarter-than-human intelligence," Yudkowsky wrote for Newsweek. 

"Many researchers steeped in these issues, including myself, expect that the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die," he asserts. "Not as in ‘maybe possibly some remote chance,’ but as in ‘that is the obvious thing that would happen.’"

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For Yudkowsky, the problem is that an AI more intelligent than human beings might disobey its creators and would not care for human life. Do not think "Terminator" — "Visualize an entire alien civilization, thinking at millions of times human speeds, initially confined to computers—in a world of creatures that are, from its perspective, very stupid and very slow," he writes. 

Yudkowsky warns that there is no proposed plan for dealing with a superintelligence that decides the most optimal solution to whatever problem it is tasked with solving is annihilating all life on Earth. He also raises concerns that AI researchers do not actually know if learning models have become "self-aware," and whether it is ethical to own them if they are. 

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Six months is not enough time to come up with a plan, he argues. "It took more than 60 years between when the notion of Artificial Intelligence was first proposed and studied, and for us to reach today’s capabilities. Solving safety of superhuman intelligence—not perfect safety, safety in the sense of ‘not killing literally everyone’—could very reasonably take at least half that long."

Instead, Yudkowsky proposes international cooperation, even between rivals like the U.S. and China, to shut down development of powerful AI systems. He says this is more important than "preventing a full nuclear exchange," and that countries should even consider using nuclear weapons "if that's what it takes to reduce the risk of large AI training runs." 

"Shut it all down," Yudkowsky writes. "Shut down all the large GPU clusters (the large computer farms where the most powerful AIs are refined). Shut down all the large training runs. Put a ceiling on how much computing power anyone is allowed to use in training an AI system, and move it downward over the coming years to compensate for more efficient training algorithms. No exceptions for governments and militaries." 

Yudkowsky's drastic warning comes as artificial intelligence software continues to grow in popularity. OpenAI's ChatGPT is a recently-released artificial intelligence chatbot that has shocked users by being able to compose songs, create content and even write code.

"We've got to be careful here," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said about his company's creation earlier this month. "I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this."

Fox News' Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.

The deaths of at least 39 migrants at a Mexican migrant facility just south of the U.S. border are being investigated as homicides and arrest warrants are expected Thursday. 

At a press conference Wednesday, Mexico's Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodriguez said prosecutors identified eight people suspected of being responsible for the deaths at the migrant center in the city of Ciudad Juarez, located across the Rio Grande less than eight miles south of El Paso, Texas.

Rodriguez said they include two Mexican federal agents, a Chihuahua state migration officer and five members of a private security firm, Reuters reported. 

"There is obviously a grave crime," Rodríguez reportedly said. "These were human lives. It’s unforgivable."

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Video circulated on social media showed one male detainee inside a cell kicking on bars as the flames worsened. Uniformed guards appeared to leave amid the blaze without helping detainees get out. Officials said part of the investigation examines whether a key was available to open the cell or if there was another way to break the lock. 

"Who didn't let these people out? Clearly, there is a serious crime," Rodriguez said, adding the surveillance footage was part of the probe. "They weren't capable of opening a gate."

At the same event, Sara Irene Herrerias, leader of the human rights unit at Mexico's Attorney General's Office, said no arrests had been made yet but warrants were expected to come Wednesday evening and into Thursday, according to Reuters. 

Herrerias said a probe was opened "for the crime of homicide and damage to property," though other possible offenses are being weighed, The Guardian reported. 

"None of the public servants or the private security personnel took any action to open the door for the migrants who were inside," she told reporters.

Rodríguez said the migrants held at the facility had been rounded up off the streets earlier in the day as neighbors complained about panhandling, the Los Angeles Times reported. 

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised there would be "no impunity" over the tragedy.

"There is no intention to cover up what happened, no intention to protect anyone," López Obrador told reporters, according to the Times. "In our government we don’t permit violation of human rights or impunity."

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López Obrador said some of the migrants held at the center are believed to have started the fire themselves in protest over expected deportations. "They put mats at the door of the shelter and set them on fire as a protest, and did not imagine that it would cause this terrible tragedy," he said Tuesday, according to Agence France-Presse. 

Still, the Mexican president insisted those responsible for "causing this painful tragedy will be punished in conformity with the law." 

The victims were all men and mostly from Guatemala, but others who died were from Honduras, Venezuela, El Salvador, Colombia and Ecuador, according to Mexican authorities. The Times reported that the death toll increased from 28 to 39 Wednesday, while others remain hospitalized, including 17 in critical condition, nine listed as "delicate" and two as stable. 

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres demanded a "thorough investigation." 

Tensions between authorities and migrants had apparently been running high in recent weeks in Ciudad Juarez, where shelters are full of people waiting for opportunities to cross into the U.S. or for the asylum process to play out, The Associated Press reported. 

The high level of frustration in Ciudad Juarez was evident earlier this month when hundreds of mostly Venezuelan migrants tried to force their way across one of the international bridges to El Paso, acting on false rumors that the United States would allow them to enter the country. U.S. authorities blocked their attempts.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.