There’s no stuffing AI back inside Pandora's box—but the world’s largest AI companies are voluntarily working with governments to address the biggest fears around the technology and calm concerns that unchecked AI development could lead to sci-fi scenarios where the AI turns against its creators. Without strict legal provisions strengthening governments’ AI commitments, though, the conversations will only go so far.
This morning, 16 influential AI companies including Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI, 10 countries, and the EU met at a summit in Seoul to set guidelines around responsible AI development. One of the big outcomes of yesterday’s summit was AI companies in attendance agreeing to a so-called kill switch, or a policy in which they would halt development of their most advanced AI models if they were deemed to have passed certain risk thresholds. Yet it’s unclear how effective the policy actually could be, given that it fell short of attaching any actual legal weight to the agreement, or defining specific risk thresholds. Other AI companies not in attendance, or competitors to those that agreed in spirit to the terms, would not be subject to the pledge.
