Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI on Tuesday joined a dozen other companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence development in a pledge to develop the technology safely at a time when regulators are scrambling to keep up with rapid innovation and emerging risks .
Companies at the second global meeting included companies from China, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.
They were supported by a broader statement from the Group of Seven (G7) major economies, the EU, Singapore, Australia and South Korea at a virtual meeting hosted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol.
South Korea’s presidential office said countries have agreed to prioritize AI safety, innovation and inclusivity.
“We must ensure the safety of AI to protect the well-being and democracy of our society,” Yoon said, raising concerns about risks such as deepfake.
Participants highlighted the importance of interoperability between governance frameworks, plans for a network of security institutions and collaboration with international agencies to build on agreement to better address risks at an initial meeting.
Companies also committed to security include Zhipu.ai, – backed by China’s Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan and Xiaomi – the UAE’s Technology Innovation Institute, Amazon, IBM and Samsung Electronics.
They have committed to publishing safety frameworks for measuring risks, avoiding models that cannot adequately mitigate risks, and ensuring governance and transparency.
“It is critical to reach international agreement on the ‘red lines’ where AI development would become unacceptably dangerous to public safety,” said Beth Barnes, founder of METR, a group that promotes the safety of AI models, in response to the statement.
Computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, known as a “godfather of AI,” welcomed the pledges but noted that voluntary commitments would have to be accompanied by regulations.
Since November, the discussion about AI regulation has shifted from longer-term doomsday scenarios to more practical issues such as the use of AI in areas such as medicine or finance, said Aidan Gomez, co-founder of major language modeling agency Cohere on the sidelines of the meeting.
China, which co-signed the ‘Bletchley Agreement’ on collectively managing AI risks at its first meeting in November, was not present on Tuesday but will attend an in-person ministerial session on Wednesday, a South Korean presidential official said.
Tesla’s Elon Musk, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee and other AI industry leaders participated in the meeting.
The next meeting will take place in France, officials said.
