The U.N. Security Council will hold a first-ever meeting on the potential threats of artificial intelligence to international peace and security, organized by the United Kingdom.
UK Ambassador Barbara Woodward announced the July 18 meeting as the centerpiece of its presidency of the council this month. It will include briefings by international AI experts and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who last month called the alarm bells over the most advanced form of AI “deafening,” and loudest from its developers.
“These scientists and experts have called on the world to act, declaring AI an existential threat to humanity on a par with the risk of nuclear war,” the U.N. chief said.
Guterres announced plans to appoint an advisory board on artificial intelligence in September to prepare initiatives that the U.N. can take. He also said he would react favorably to a new U.N. agency on AI and suggested as a model the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is knowledge-based and has some regulatory powers.
Europe has led the world in efforts to regulate artificial intelligence, which gained urgency with the rise of a new breed of artificial intelligence that gives AI chatbots like ChatGPT the power to generate text, images, video and audio that resemble human work. On June 14, EU lawmakers signed off on the world’s first set of comprehensive rules for artificial intelligence, clearing a key hurdle as authorities across the globe race to rein in AI.
Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced that the UK will host a summit on AI later this year, “where we’ll be able to have a truly global multilateral discussion>”.
From The Shadows Emerges Knowledge