| I'll copy my LinkedIn comment: "Well done to the UK for not signing the fully compromised Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for the People and the Planet. Australia shouldn't have signed this statement either given how France intentionally derailed attempts to build a global consensus on how we can develop AI safely. For those who lack context, the UK organised the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in November 2023 to allow countries to discuss how advanced AI technologies can be discussed safely. There was a mini-conference in Korea, France was given the opportunity to organise the next big conference, a trust they immediately betrayed by changing the event to be about promoting investment in their AI industry. They renamed the summit to the AI Action Summit and relegated safety from the sole focus to being just one of five focus areas, but not even one of five equally important focus areas, but one that seems to have been purposefully minimized even further. Within the conference statement safety was reduced to a single paragraph that undermines safety if anything: “Harnessing the benefits of AI technologies to support our economies and societies depends on advancing Trust and Safety. We commend the role of the Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit and Seoul Summits that have been essential in progressing international cooperation on AI safety and we note the voluntary commitments launched there. We will keep addressing the risks of AI to information integrity and continue the work on AI transparency.” Let’s break it down:
• First, safety is being framed as “trust and safety”. These are not the same things. The word trust appearing first is not as innocent as it appears: trust is the primary goal and safety is secondary to this. This is a very commercial perspective, if people trust your product you can trick them into buying it, even if it isn't actually safe.
• Second, trust and safety are not framed as values important in and of themselves, but as subordinate to realising the benefits of these technologies, primarily the "economic benefits". While the development of advanced AI technologies could theoretically create a social surplus that could be taxed and distributed, it's naive to assume that this will be automatic, particularly when the policy mechanisms are this compromised.
• Finally, the statement doesn’t commit to continuing to address these risks, but only narrowly to “addressing the risks of AI to information integrity” and “continue the work on AI transparency”. In other words, they’re purposefully downplaying any more significant potential risks, likely because discussing more serious risks would get in the way of convincing companies to invest in France. Unfortunately, France has sold out humanity for short-term commercial benefit and we may all pay the price." |