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Steve Bannon, Meghan Markle and Stephen Fry have joined a gaggle of public figures calling for a “ban” on the event of so-called superintelligence in an unlikely alliance against advanced artificial intelligence systems.
More than 800 people, including AI scientists, politicians, celebrities and spiritual leaders, have signed a declaration to forestall the creation of “superintelligence,” AI systems which might be smarter than most humans.
“We call for a ban on the event of superintelligence, which must not be lifted until there’s broad scientific consensus that it’s going to occur safely and controllably, and robust public support,” the statement said.
Signatories include AI godfathers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, former Irish President Mary Robinson and Prince Harry.
The Future of Life Institute (FLI), a nonprofit campaign group, released the letter Wednesday together with a poll showing 5 percent of Americans support “the present establishment of unregulated development.”
Nearly three-quarters of respondents supported strict regulation, in line with the campaign group's survey.
The institute's president, Max Tegmark, told the Financial Times: “It is our humanity that brings us all together here… More and more persons are pondering that the most important threat is just not the opposite company and even the opposite country, but perhaps the machines we construct.”
Several leading Big Tech corporations and AI startups, including OpenAI, Meta and Google, are in fierce competition to be the primary to develop “superintelligence,” or artificial general intelligence. Both terms generally confer with AI systems that may outperform humans at most tasks.
In March 2023, five months after ChatGPT's launch, technology experts including Elon Musk released the same statement organized by FLI calling for a six-month moratorium on all AI development. However, Musk's xAI continues to construct AI systems.
The latest statement is narrower and “in no way calls for a pause in AI development,” Tegmark said.
“You don’t need superintelligence to cure cancer, for self-driving cars, or to massively increase productivity and efficiency,” Tegmark added.
Several distinguished Chinese scientists signed the statement, including Andrew Yao and Ya-Qin Zhang, former president of Baidu.
Other signatories include former administration officials Susan Rice, national security adviser under then-President Barack Obama, and Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff within the Obama and George W. Bush administrations.
Tegmark said: “Loss of control is something that’s seen as a national security threat by each the West and China. They will oppose it for their very own interest, so that they don't have to trust one another in any respect.”
Other signatories include Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Virgin co-founder Richard Branson, in addition to faith leaders from all religions.
The global AI regulatory landscape is progressing slowly. The most progressive laws, the EU AI Act, is being introduced step by step despite strong criticism from industry.
In the US, states reminiscent of California, Utah and Texas have enacted specific AI laws. A proposed 10-year moratorium on AI regulation was faraway from the federal budget proposal in July.
