AI Safety Summit 2024

Introduction

Big Tech companies commit to AI safety. Let’s see how exciting is this event for techies.

South Korea staged the second global AI Safety Summit in Seoul on May 21–22, six months after Britain held the first at Bletchley Park. Government sources said the event will extend on the ‘Bletchley Declaration,’ a deal struck by 28 countries, including the US and China, to tackle AI safety.

AI poses several threats to humans, even extinction. AI is advancing rapidly, and humans are unprepared for the repercussions. AI firms are racing to the bottom without regard for safety. Governments must intervene to prevent superhuman AI before humanity can safely develop it. This worldwide halt is needed because countries are racing like companies. Only summits allow true pauses.

Big Techs for ‘Frontier AI Safety Commitments’

• Amazon
• Anthropic
• Cohere
• Google / Google DeepMind
• G42
• IBM
• Inflection AI
• Meta
• Microsoft
• Mistral AI
• Naver
• OpenAI
• Samsung Electronics
• Technology Innovation Institute
• xAI
• Zhipu.ai

Agenda

Day 1:

AI Seoul Summit Leaders’ Session – Building on the AI Safety Summit: towards an Innovative and Inclusive Future

Day 2:

Session 1: action to strengthen AI safety

Session 2: approach for sustainability and resilience

AI Safety Summit 2024 Key Takeaways

• These talks will build on the Bletchley AI Safety Summit to improve global AI safety cooperation, including frontier AI risk consensus and the International AI Safety Report.
• Promoting “safe, secure, and trustworthy” AI.
• To improve the worldwide community’s ability to respond to major AI hazards, participants will showcase the work of national AI Safety Institutes and debate how to build AI safety principles and practices.
• Participants discussed future AI safety expert international cooperation.
• Participants used the interim International AI Safety Report to address potential hazards from present and near-future frontier AI models, mitigation techniques, and next steps for developing the complete Report for the next Summit in France.
• To mitigate AI’s negative effects, technical challenges like AI model creation must be addressed, as must the deployment of responsible and trustworthy AI to boost social benefits and acceptability.
• A worldwide coordinated AI development strategy should address energy and environmental challenges, labor market implications, mass misinformation and disinformation manufacturing, and immoral bias.

AiThority’s Exclusive Industry Opinion

Comment by Andy Norton, European Cyber Risk Officer on the 2024 safety summit 

*”AI safety is crucial, particularly as it’s already a driving force behind cyberattacks. Organizations can’t wait for guidance from these safety summits. AI-powered cyberattacks are already supercharging cyberwarfare and it demands an immediate response.

“Threat actors are weaponizing AI to not only manipulate information and opinion on a massive scale but also erode public trust, attack the media, and sow discord. Disinformation campaigns that disrupt and destabilize economies will escalate with the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs), deep fakes, sophisticated voice replication, and social media technologies. Now, 45% of UK IT leaders believe cyberwarfare could lead to cyberattacks on the media. Worryingly 37% also believe that cyberwarfare could affect the integrity of an election.

“Organizations must move towards a more proactive stance and future-proof their defenses. Security leaders need to fight fire with fire, using AI-powered solutions that empower them with actionable intelligence to spot AI-fueled threats in their tracks. With the right foresight, organizations can detect the dangerous misuse of AI, stopping threats before any harm is done. Forewarned is forearmed.”*

Key Takeaways from Rishi Sunak, UK Prime Minister and Lee, Minister of Republic of Korea

Wrapping Up

The Seoul summit is one of many global efforts to regulate rapidly advancing technology that promised to transform many aspects of society, but it has also raised concerns about new risks for everyday life like algorithmic bias that skews search results and existential threats to humanity. Malfunctioning AI systems might propagate bias in healthcare, job recruitment, and financial lending, while the technology’s potential to automate many occupations poses systemic threats to the labor market. South Korea seeks to shape global AI governance and norms during the Seoul meeting.