We, the undersigned, call for a special session of the UN General Assembly specifically on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) to engage politicians, businesses, NGOs and AGI experts on how to gain the benefits and avoid the risks of AGI before it is too late.
While current AI systems serve limited purposes like medical diagnosis or report writing, AGI is expected to be able to address novel problems with novel solutions at or beyond human capacity. More advanced forms will rewrite their own computer code, leading to its own objectives beyond human control. If managed well, AGI could drive unprecedented advances in medicine, education, economics, longevity research, climate solutions, and global peace. However, without proper oversight, it could pose an existential threat to human civilisation.
We congratulate the UN for establishing the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. Although the Terms of Reference for this Panel do not reflect the urgency of addressing AGI, it should be a top priority for their deliberations. Big Tech companies are expecting to invest $650 billion into AGI, making it the largest investment in history. Early forms of AGI have already been announced by the journal Nature. More advanced forms of AGI are most likely to be achieved within this decade. We recommend that one of the working groups of the new AI panel focus specifically on the governance of AGI.
Those who know the most warn of existential risk from unregulated AGI:
- Statement of risk: Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority… signed by 100 AI scientists and business executives including Sam Altman, Bill Gates, Demis Hassabis, Elon Musk, Stuart Russell and Yoshua Bengio.
- Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic and former VP of research at OpenAI: “My chance that something goes really quite catastrophically wrong on the scale of human civilisation might be somewhere between 10% and 25%.”
- Geoffrey Hinton, a father of AI and Nobel Prize winner said: “I think it’s important that people understand it’s not just science fiction; it’s not just fear-mongering – it is a real risk that we need to think about, and we need to figure out in advance how to deal with it.”
Recognising this, the Council of Presidents of the UN General Assembly (UNCPGA) established the High-Level Expert Panel on AGI. This AGI Panel was composed of Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell and seven other AGI leaders that produced the report Governance of the Transition to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Urgent Considerations for the UN General Assembly. The report concludes: “increasing the awareness of national and international leaders concerning the benefits and risks of future AGI—as distinct from current forms of AI—is urgently needed.”
The UN Scientific Panel on AI will take several months to get organised and a full year to produce initial results. In the meantime, AI would have evolved by several generations. We need urgent action.
We support the UNCPGA AGI report and recommend its immediate distribution to UN Member States and a briefing on its contents initiated by your Excellency’s office leading to a special session of the UN General Assembly specially on AGI.
Signed:
Paul Shrivastava, Co-President, the Club of Rome
Carlos Álvarez Pereira, Secretary General, the Club of Rome
Ugo Bardi, former professor of chemistry at the University of Florence
Christian Berg, Vice President, German Chapter of the Club of Rome
Gianfranco Bologna, WWF Italy – Club of Rome – Italian Alliance Sustainable Development ASviS
Mariana Bozesan, full member Club of Rome & President AQAL Group
Gerardo del Cerro Santamaría, New York Academy of Sciences
David F. Ciampi, USA Club of Rome
Jude Currivan, Co-founder, WholeWorld-View
Roger Cremades, University of Leeds
Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Honorary President of the Club of Rome and Executive Chair, Earth4All
Fernande Faulkner, Canadian Association of the Club of Rome
Joerg Geier, Director, Executive Education, Thunderbird School of Global Management
Jerome Glenn, Chief Executive Officer, the Millenium Project
Andy Haines, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Sirka Heinonen, Professor of the Finland Futures Research Centre at the University of Turku
Friedrich Hinterberger, the Club of Rome and Wachstum im Wandel
Barry Hughes, University of Denver
Ndubuisi Idejiora-Kalu, Professor, Applied Systems Engineering Research Institute, Nigeria; Visiting Professor Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, Rapperswil, Switzerland; Member, International Center for Transdisciplinary Studies and Research (CIRET) Paris, France
Ryan Jackson, member of the Club of Rome, International Medical Consulting
Richard van der Jagt, Canadian Association for the Club of Rome
Tapio Kanninen, President of Global Crisis Information Network Inc.
Radosveta Krastanova, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria – Head of Laboratory for Sustainable Development Solutions
Roman Krznaric, Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, University of Oxford
Hubert Landier, Centre international de recherches et d’études transdisciplinaires
David Lehrer, Associate Member, Club of Rome and Member, USACOR
Raymond J Leury, Secretary, Canadian Association for the Club of Rome
Hunter Lovins, President, Natural Capitalism Solutions
Edward W. Manning, Full Member of the Club of Rome, former President Canadian Association for the Club of Rome
Christopher Mbanefo, board member, the Club of Rome
Morne Mostert, Mindset Index
Nebojša Nešković, President, Serbian Chapter of the Club of Rome
Gabriel Peredo Albornoz – Uma Kanchariq, Doctorado en Conservación y Gestión de la Biodiversidad, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Santo Tomás, Chile
Cristina Popa Tache, Danubius Internațional University
Franz Josef Radermacher, Forschungsinstitut für anwendungsorientierte Wissensverarbeitung/n, Ulm
Kate Raworth, Senior Teaching Associate, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford
Walter R. Stahel, The Product-Life Institute Geneva
Anitra Thorhaug, Co-President, US Association of the Club of Rome
Andrew Welch, Chair, Canadian Association for the Club of Rome
Markku Wilenius, Professor of Futures Studies at the Turku School of Business
Jinfeng Zhou, President of World Academy of Sustainable Development Limited
Laszlo Zsolnai, Business Ethics Center, Corvinus University of Budapest
Ibon Zugasti, Director, Prospektiker – European Institute for Futures Studies
