Elon Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives are calling for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI's newly launched GPT-4, in an open letter citing potential risks to society.

Earlier this month, Microsoft-backed OpenAI unveiled the fourth iteration of its GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) AI program, which has wowed users by engaging them in human-like conversation, composing songs and summarizing lengthy documents.

"Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable," said the letter issued by the Future of Life Institute.