AI has broken out of the laboratories, and now rules are needed: its creators have appealed to world leaders

The heads of OpenAI and Anthropic urged world leaders to impose strict limits on artificial intelligence. During a meeting of the UN Security Council, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei warned that a technology that has come out of Silicon Valley laboratories could become uncontrollable and lead to catastrophic consequences. Their remarks are described in an article by The New York Times, which the source cites.

The developers’ warnings came against the backdrop of the White House’s opposing stance, where efforts to curb the technology’s development were previously called “globalist schemes.” Industry figures themselves spoke about the risks in far darker terms than usually heard in UN diplomatic discussions.

The head of OpenAI, Sam Altman, said that even a minimal probability of a global catastrophe cannot be considered acceptable:

“It doesn’t matter whether people estimate the risk of catastrophe at 10%, 1%, 12%, or 0.1%. None of these levels is remotely acceptable.”

According to Altman, humanity faces a choice between a new renaissance of discovery and an industrial revolution that would bring chaos and upheaval.

Anthropic’s chief, Dario Amodei, who joined the meeting by video link, warned of an approaching existential threat to humanity. He called for an immediate slowdown of the technology race and for clear, strict limits to be set for the industry. The first step, he said, should be a complete ban on using artificial intelligence to create biological weapons.

The article called the situation paradoxical: companies valued in the trillions of dollars and seeking to go public are themselves asking for external oversight. Altman urged democratic governments not to leave key decisions solely to developers:

“If artificial intelligence is destined to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made solely by laboratories in San Francisco.”

The meeting also revealed deep divisions among world powers. The United States categorically opposed supranational control. White House representative Michael Kratsios said that the UN Security Council should not oversee a technology it does not understand.

China supported each country’s sovereign right to independently determine the path of algorithm development. Russia questioned whether the UN Security Council has the authority to discuss artificial intelligence issues.

The Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, Edward Miliband, rebutted skeptics, emphasizing the state’s responsibility to its people:

“You cannot absolve yourself of responsibility to citizens: the foremost duty of government is to protect people, and that cannot be shifted onto private companies, no matter the issue.”

The source article identified the main contradiction as the fact that developers of digital systems are calling for limits on their own technology, while states are unwilling to give up their pursuit of technological advantage. It remains an open question whether countries will be able to agree on rules before artificial intelligence becomes uncontrollable.