A new open letter, signed by a range of AI scientists, celebrities, policymakers, and faith leaders, calls for a ban on the development of “superintelligence”—a hypothetical AI technology that could exceed the intelligence of all of humanity—until the technology is reliably safe and controllable.
The letter’s more notable signatories include AI pioneer and Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, other AI luminaries such as Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell, as well as business leaders such as Virgin cofounder Richard Branson and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. It was also signed by celebrities, including actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who recently expressed concerns over Meta’s AI products, will.i.am, and Prince Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Policy and national security figures as diverse as Trump ally and strategist Steve Bannon and Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, also appear on the list of more than 1,000 other signatories.
