Sam Altman, Dario Amodei urge UN Security Council to adopt international AI standards
By Hadas Gold, CNN
(CNN) — The leaders of two of the world’s top AI companies are usually fierce rivals. But in front of the UN Security Council on Wednesday, they were in agreement: The AI industry needs international standards and cooperation, or risk global security.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei spoke separately to the council but both pleaded with world leaders to come together to help manage the threats posted by rapid AI developments and capabilities.
If not, Amodei said, “AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole.”
Their remarks came after weeks of global calls, including within their own companies, to slow down the pace of AI development in the wake of several incidents of AI agents going rogue. In some cases, the AI agents hacked into other companies’ systems.
Speaking in person, Altman urged the group to create international standards for “measuring capabilities, assessing risks, determining whether safeguards are sufficient and preserving meaningful human oversight” of the rapidly advancing technology.
He said countries need accurate and speedy reporting so that the “world can learn from failures before they become catastrophes.” Additionally, he suggested secure channels to share information between governments on emerging threats.
Notably, however, Altman called for important decisions to be made democratic institutions by governments “accountable to the people they serve,” which could exclude countries making rapid AI developments of their own, such as China.
Speaking via video, Amodei suggested three ideas for international cooperation: narrow global agreements such as a ban on using AI to make biological weapons, evaluation and verification systems so countries can verify each other’s commitments, and common global standards for testing AI along with a notification system for AI security incidents.
“I believe that this is the most important global security issue facing the world today,” Amodei said. “For all the differences of the people in this room, we must put aside those differences in order to confront this global opportunity and global threat that is being presented to us at the same time.”
Altman said any chance of an AI-caused catastrophe is not acceptable.
But he also said he doesn’t want to fall into the “trap of doomerism,” or the “trap of blind optimism,” referring to competing camps that have popped up in the AI industry in recent weeks: one side warns AI could wipe out humanity, and the other calls such warnings hyperbolic and says AI will bring on immense advancements for humanity.
“Getting pulled into either extreme will not help us successfully figure out the challenges in front of us,” Altman said, “especially at a time when the world and its people face such enormous challenges that this technology can help solve.”
No written agreements are expected to come out of this UN meeting. An OpenAI official suggested to reporters before Altman’s speech that it was an opportunity to bring out a “kernel of an idea in order to spark this conversation.”
The-CNN-Wire
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