A group of prominent AI ethicists have criticized the recent open letter calling for a six-month “pause” on AI development, arguing that the focus on hypothetical future threats ignores the real harms caused by the technology today. Timnit Gebru, Emily M. Bender, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Margaret Mitchell, all of whom were pushed out of Google over a paper criticizing the capabilities of AI, have published a response calling for regulation that enforces transparency and holds companies accountable for the outputs produced by their products. The authors argue that the current race towards ever larger “AI experiments” is driven by the profit motive and must be shaped by regulation that protects the rights and interests of people.