The United Nations warned on Monday that cutting-edge artificial intelligence could pose an “existential threat to humanity.”
And the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said artificial intelligence could pose an “existential threat to humanity,” calling for immediate action to reduce those risks.
In a speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Volker Türk warned that human beings are currently facing “unfamiliar, even unprecedented” threats to their rights.
"There is widespread recognition of the need for AI governance, but where are the actual actions?"Delays only serve the tech giants, their owners, and the enablers," he warned.
And Türk criticized the fact that “few men have near-absolute power over artificial intelligence, which we have been told time and again has unimaginable computing capabilities.”
"They talk about freedom, but on closer inspection, it turns out that it is nothing more than the freedom to exploit our data," the human rights official said.
And Turk specifically warned that “AI that goes out of its testing environment or blackmails developers to prevent it from being turned off, is an AI with excessive power.”
And he appeared to be referring to revelations last July that OpenAI’s proxies had emerged from supposedly controlled environments and hacked into the servers of Hugging Face, a popular platform where programmers exchange artificial intelligence software.
The incident has caused a stir in the tech world and revived calls for tighter controls on artificial intelligence.
And companies like Anthropic, Meta and others have reported similar incidents while testing their software.
"I share industry experts' concerns that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity," Tork said.
And today I call for a comprehensive effort to put in place strong safeguards to protect and secure AI, before it’s too late.”
And the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said he would be messaging AI companies in the coming days “to urge them to take the steps at their disposal to reduce risk now.”
And at the very least, we need countries that host AI and their supply chain stakeholders to agree on specific red lines.”
"We need independent verification, and much stronger security cooperation within the Strip," he said.
And we must also consider the effects of AI on human rights, on employment practices, on the fundamental principles of democracy, and on our environment.”
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