Oct. 22 (UPI) — Prince Harry and Meghan Markle added their names to a growing list of signers of a petition against artificial superintelligence, a technology that doesn’t yet exist.
The Statement on Superintelligence was created by the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit that aims to steer technology toward benefitting life and away from large-scale risks. Its current concern is artificial intelligence. It took on the cause in 2023, soon after ChatGPT came to market and AI became more real for the general public.
The next level is likely artificial general intelligence, which is when AI performs the same as humans. Artificial superintelligence is when AI becomes smarter than humans. Neither has been developed yet, but tech companies are pushing in that direction.
The petition, aimed at governments, tech firms and lawmakers, states: “Many leading AI companies have the stated goal of building superintelligence in the coming decade that can significantly outperform all humans on essentially all cognitive tasks. This has raised concerns, ranging from human economic obsolescence and disempowerment, losses of freedom, civil liberties, dignity, and control, to national security risks and even potential human extinction. The succinct statement below aims to create common knowledge of the growing number of experts and public figures who oppose a rush to superintelligence.”
The succinct statement:
“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 signers stands at 1,075 as of this writing, and it includes a broad range of some of the top minds of our time: Nobel laureates, scientists, politicians, business leaders and media professionals.
They include Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton; the “godfather of modern AI Yoshua Benigo; Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak; former National Security Adviser Susan Rice; former Director of AI Strategy and Policy for the Department of Defense Mark Beall; former Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo.; former Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky.; Andre Hoffman, vice-chair of Roche and co-chair of the World Economic Forum; founder of Breitbart Steve Bannon; political commentator Glenn Beck; musician Will.I.am; artist Grimes; and actor and filmmaker Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
In June, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a plan for “personal superintelligence” in AI and announced a new business unit called Meta Superintelligence Labs. He said development of superintelligence was “now in sight.”
Anthony Aguirre, physicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and co-founder of FLI, told NBC News that AI developments are happening faster than the public can understand.
“We’ve, at some level, had this path chosen for us by the AI companies and founders and the economic system that’s driving them, but no one’s really asked almost anybody else, ‘Is this what we want?'” he said in an NBC interview.
“It’s kind of taken as: Well, this is where it’s going, so buckle up, and we’ll just have to deal with the consequences. But I don’t think that’s how it actually is. We have many choices as to how we develop technologies, including this one,” Aguirre said.
The goal of the petition is to have signers from a broad range of people, Aguirre said.
“We want this to be social permission for people to talk about it, but also we want to very much represent that this is not a niche issue of some nerds in Silicon Valley, who are often the only people at the table. This is an issue for all of humanity,” he said.