The statement signed by Harry and Meghan was organised by the Future of Life Institute, a US-based AI safety group. The statement signed by Harry and Meghan was organised by the Future of Life Institute, a US-based AI safety group. Nobel laureates also sign letter saying ASI technology should be barred until there is consensus that it can be developed'safely' The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have joined artificial intelligence pioneers and Nobel laureates in calling for a ban on developing superintelligent AI systems . Harry and Meghan are among the signatories of a statement calling for "a prohibition on the development of superintelligence". Artificial superintelligence (ASI) is the term for AI systems, yet to be developed, that exceed human levels of intelligence at all cognitive tasks.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently published a post on his personal blog reflecting on AI progress and his predictions for how the technology will impact humanity's future. "We are now confident we know how to build AGI [artificial general intelligence] as we have traditionally understood it,"Altman wrote. He added that OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is beginning to turn its attention to superintelligence. While there is no universally accepted definition for AGI, OpenAI has historically defined it as "a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work." Although AI systems already outperform humans in narrow domains, such as chess, the key to AGI is generality.

Early warnings about the risk from AI were rather vague. Turing himself, in a 1951 radio address, felt it necessary to point out the risk from superintelligent AI: "If a machine can think, it might think more intelligently than we do, and then where should we be? Even if we could keep the machines in a subservient position, for instance by turning off the power at strategic moments, we should, as a species, feel greatly humbled. I. J. Good adds to his prediction of the benefits of an intelligence explosion the proviso, "provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control." One has a general sense that the presence of superintelligent entities on our planet might be cause for concern; on the other hand, we generally find that smarter machines are more useful so it is not obvious why making them very much smarter is necessarily bad.

Most superintelligent systems will by default develop instrumental subgoals that conflict with human interests. This could have catastrophic consequences. If we don't actively work on control mechanisms and safety of AI systems, this will most likely pose an existential risk to humanity. Artificial intelligence is all around us in many parts of every day life; our phones find the fastest way to move from A to B, spam is automatically filtered out of our email inboxes, and Netflix recommends movies and tv-shows tailored to our likings. For the near future, AI promises many changes of how we live: from self-driving cars to intelligent fridges. Obviously, there is a great interest in developing stronger, faster and more intelligent AI systems. Giant companies such as Alphabet (Google), Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, etc. have long realized how profitable and promising this field of research and development is. At the same time, governments have begun to invest in the military use of AI. Overall, there is a big hype around AI topics, especially when mentioning buzzwords such as deep learning.

Slate is currently running a feature called "Future Tense," which claims to be the "citizens guide to the future." Two of their recent articles, however, are full of inaccuracies about AI safety and the researchers studying it. While this is disappointing, it also represents a good opportunity to clear up some misconceptions about why AI safety research is necessary. The first contested article was Let Artificial Intelligence Evolve, by Michael Chorost, which displays a poor understanding of the issues surrounding the evolution of artificial intelligence. The second, How to be Good, by Adam Elkus, got some of the concerns about developing safe AI correct, but, in the process, did great disservice to one of today's most prominent AI safety researchers, as well as to scientific research in general.