European tech leaders have lent their support to calls to slow down AI advancement, following warnings that the technology poses an existential threat to humanity.
“Slowing the pace of this technology is important, but it needs to be [regulated] across governments, and we need enforcement across countries for it to work,” said Pip White, head of U.K. and Ireland, Northern Europe, and Israel at Anthropic, speaking at the Fortune CEO Forum in London.
Her comments came after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei shared his own appeal on social media for AI companies to pace frontier development. In the post, he called for global coordination to address the risks of AI and said Anthropic would “unilaterally” commit to giving external evaluators access to its models, training, and processes to ensure their safety.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and Demis Hassabis, the cofounder and chair of Google DeepMind, have all voiced their support for Amodei’s proposal to slow the pace of AI development. Altman and Amodei briefed the UN Security Council on Sept. 23 on the threats of uncontrollable AI and the need for global alignment to ensure the technology’s safety.
“Most people in our industry see the risks and are concerned, and this requires a global coordination effort for the best outcomes possible,” White added.
Fears around AI have hit a fever pitch recently after a former Anthropic and OpenAI employee, Jacob Coxon, shared concerns that “neither company is acting responsibly,” adding that he and others developing AI “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
This week, an OpenAI agent was found to have infiltrated an Australian government website in June and accessed Medicare data. The incident went unnoticed for three months and was only identified following an “extensive review” of OpenAI’s models. The company said it is now working with the Australian government to help it address any potential security vulnerabilities.
It is understood to be the first known breach of a government system by a rogue AI agent and has added to concerns about the threats the technology presents.
Microsoft responded to escalating concerns about artificial intelligence by publishing a code of conduct to inform the training of its models and ensure AI remains “subordinate and always in service of people.”
“Artificial intelligence has to be scaffolding to humans’ ambition,” said Samer Abu-Ltaif, president of Microsoft Europe, Middle East, and Africa, at the Fortune CEO Forum. “The need to regulate is definitely a prerequisite for us to continue to innovate responsibly.”
He explained that the company’s new code of conduct will act as “guardrails” to ensure that the technology “adopts ethics.”
But Abu-Ltaif added that global coordination would be necessary to avoid companies in different territories having to meet different regulatory standards. “Regulators in different countries are doing what they have to do, but this has the risk of fragmentation, and sometimes it’s led by fear rather than opportunity,” he said.
“The need to regulate is definitely a prerequisite for us to continue to innovate responsibly.”
Some European politicians remain skeptical of calls for an AI slowdown. French Finance minister Roland Lescure told Reuters he could clearly see the “self-interest” in asking everyone else to slow down so that the leading companies could maintain their advantage. Meanwhile, Germany’s digital affairs ministry said halting AI development was not a viable option for Europe.
French AI company Mistral has also accused U.S. AI companies of using the current fear to “consolidate their market position” and push for regulation that would put smaller competitors at a disadvantage.
Daniel Hulme, chief AI officer at advertising giant WPP, said getting every company and country to agree on a pause is not realistic. “I don’t think there’s going to be an AI slowdown. I don’t think anybody’s going to agree on slowing things down,” he added.
Despite their recent calls for an AI slowdown, Anthropic and OpenAI have both released more affordable versions of their frontier models this week.
Hulme added that regulators should focus on the harm AI can cause when it is deployed carelessly or in the wrong setting: “Would you hire an intoxicated graduate for the job in question? If not, you probably shouldn’t be using AI for it.”
He also suggested that AI should be tested by independent organizations before being released, and advised governments to follow the methods used to regulate other industries, such as the use of clinical trials in the pharmaceutical industry. Hulme concluded: “We don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
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