London: Artificial intelligence pioneer and head of Google Deepmind, Demis Hassabis, said Monday that greater international cooperation was needed on AI regulation, but “difficult” to achieve “in today’s geopolitical context”.
At a time when AI is integrated across all industries, its uses have raised major ethical questions – from the spread of incorrect information to its influence on employment or the loss of technological control.
At London’s South by Southwest (SXSW) festival on Monday, Hassabis – which has won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research at AI – also the challenges that artificial general intelligence (AGI), a technology that could match and even surpass human capacity, would bring.
“The most important thing is that it must be a form of international cooperation because the technology is across all borders. It will be applied to all countries,” Hassabis said.
“Many, many countries are involved in researching or building data centers or hosting these technologies. So I think everything to be meaningful, there must be some kind of international cooperation or collaboration, and unfortunately it looks quite difficult in today’s geopolitical context,” he said.
At Paris’s AI summit in February, 58 countries – including China, France, India, the European Union and the African Union Commission – called for improved coordination of AI management.
But the United States warned against “excessive regulation” in which US Vice President JD Vance said it could “kill a transformative sector”.
Alongside the United States, Britain refused to sign the summit’s appeal for an “open”, “inclusive” and “ethical” AI.
Hassabis spoke on Monday for the implementation of “smart, adaptable regulation” because “it is necessary to adapt to where the technology ends up going and what the problems end up being”.
