Exclusive: 60 U.K. Lawmakers Accuse Google of Breaking AI Safety Pledge

The open letter says that "labelling a publicly accessible model as'experimental' does not absolve Google of its safety obligations," and additionally calls on Google to establish a more common-sense definition of deployment. "Companies have a great public responsibility to test new technology and not involve the public in experimentation," says Bishop of Oxford, Steven Croft, who signed the letter. "Just imagine a car manufacturer releasing a vehicle saying, 'we want the public to experiment and [give] feedback when they crash or when they bump into pedestrians and when the brakes don't work,'" he adds. Croft questions the constraints on providing safety reports at the time of release, boiling the issue down to a matter of priorities: "How much of [Google's] huge investment in AI is being channeled into public safety and reassurance and how much is going into huge computing power?" To be sure, Google isn't the only industry titan to seemingly flout safety commitments.