Back from Paris

The so-called AI Action Summit¹ takes place today and tomorrow in Paris, but I am back home after the inaugural meeting of the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI that took place there last week. Much was said at our meeting that I would wish for the world leaders at the Summit to pick up on, but if I had to single out just one sentence, it would be the following, said by the organization's president pro tempore Stuart Russell in his closing address:

It is entirely reasonable for governments to impose safety requirements that manufacturers cannot meet.

Read it, and read it again, and upon a moment's thought you will find it utterly obvious. Safety requirements are safety requirements. Yet, so much of contemporary AI governance discussion seems to implicitly rest on its negation.

Stuart Russell's talk can be found here, beginning 03:35:50 into the video. Other notable talks were given by Yoshua Bengio, Anca Dragan, Geoffrey Hinton, Maria Ressa, Joseph Stiglitz and Max Tegmark. These and many others are available in the videos collected here. I especially recommend Bengio's talk, beginning 17:00 into this video.

Footnote

1) The name change, compared to the 2023 AI Safety Summit led by Rishi Sunak at Bletchley Park in the UK, is unfortunate. You can still protest!