At the start of the UN General Assembly this week, a group of more than 200 world leaders, Nobel laureates, and other industry experts co-signed a petition calling for consensus on AI safety measures by the end of next year. “An international agreement on clear and verifiable red lines is necessary for preventing universally unacceptable risks,” the letter reads, adding that these safeguards should be built upon “existing global frameworks and voluntary corporate commitments.” Signatories include physics Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, OpenAI co-founder Wojciech Zaremba, and former Irish President Mary Robinson.
It’s the latest in a yearslong series of appeals from some of technology’s best minds — in the form of papers, petitions, and press conferences that increasingly feel like experts screaming into the void. While some governments, like the EU, have taken steps to rein in AI companies, it seems unlikely that the countries behind the most powerful models — the US and China — will pause their full-steam-ahead approaches to enact red lines. Pleas for safety from researchers and academics are sure to continue, and to remain unaddressed.