Sam Altman, Bill Gates, and Ja Rule were some of the top signatories that have erroneously appeared on an open letter called “Pause All Giant AI Experiments,” published by the non-profit The Future of Life Institute.

Before the letter’s press embargo was lifted, both Altman and Gates were listed at the top of the list of signatories. Altman’s inclusion in the letter was particularly surprising, because it appeared that he was calling on his own company to stop training the rumored next version of OpenAI’s large language model GPT-5.

When I emailed Future of Life Institute last night for comment on Altman and Gates’ inclusion on a previous version of the letter, Anthony Aguirre, the non-profit’s VP and Secretary of the Board responded, “The signatures of Sam Altman and Bill Gates were fake, and we removed them and tightened our vetting process as soon as we were made aware of them.”

But despite the fact that Aguirre told me that they tightened their vetting process, Sam Altman again appeared on the letter after the embargo was lifted and the letter proliferated on Twitter. And today, Ja Rule seems to have appeared at the top of the list of signatories (this troll would be a version a Dave Chappelle bit about Ja Rule and 9/11).

Several people who work in AI privately told me they were “shocked” to see some of the names on the open letter, and that because it was “basically impossible to vet,” “didn’t trust any of it.”

But Krystal Hu, a Reuters reporter, confirmed that Elon Musk and Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque did sign the letter. Max Tegmarck, president of the Future of Life Institute, vouched for Yoshua Bengio and Yuval Noah Harari’s inclusion on the letter.

As I write this, a message now appears above the over 1,100 signatories, and below the letter:

Signatories list paused due to high demand

Due to high demand we are still collecting signatures but pausing their appearance on the letter so that our vetting processes can catch up. Note also that the signatures near the top of the list are all independently and directly verified.

-Brandon Gorrell