AI Heavyweights Call for End to ‘Superintelligence’ Research

I have worked in AI for more than three decades, including with pioneers such as John McCarthy, who coined the term “artificial intelligence” in 1955.

In the past few years, scientific breakthroughs have produced AI tools that promise unprecedented advances in medicine, science, business and education.

At the same time, leading AI companies have the stated goal to create superintelligence: not merely smarter tools, but AI systems that significantly outperform all humans on essentially all cognitive tasks.

Superintelligence isn’t just hype. It’s a strategic goal determined by a privileged few, and backed by hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, business incentives, frontier AI technology, and some of the world’s best researchers.

What was once science fiction has become a concrete engineering goal for the coming decade. In response, I and hundreds of other scientists, global leaders and public figures have put our names to a public statement calling for superintelligence research to stop.

What the statement says

The new statement, released today by the AI safety nonprofit Future of Life Institute, is not a call for a temporary pause, as we saw in 2023. It is a short, unequivocal call for a global ban:

We call for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and strong public buy-in.

The list of signatories represents a remarkably broad coalition, bridging divides that few other issues can. The “godfathers” of modern AI are present, such as Yoshua Bengio and Geoff Hinton. So are leading safety researchers such as UC Berkeley’s Stuart Russell.

But the concern has broken free of academic circles. The list includes tech and business leaders such as Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and Virgin’s Richard Branson. It includes high-level political and military figures from both sides of US politics, such as former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen. It also includes prominent media figures such as Glenn Beck and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, together with artists such as Will.I.am and respected historians such as Yuval Noah Harari.

-  Author: Mary-Anne Williams - UNSW Sydney, The Conversation