AI COMPANIES MAKE FRESH SAFETY PROMISE AT SEOUL SUMMIT, NATIONS AGREE TO ALIGN WORK ON RISKS

Leading artificial intelligence companies made a fresh pledge at a mini-summit this week to develop AI safely, while world leaders agreed to build a network of publicly backed safety institutes to advance research and testing of the technology.

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Google, Meta and OpenAI were among the companies that made voluntary safety commitments at the AI Seoul Summit, including pulling the plug on their cutting-edge systems if they can’t rein in the most extreme risks.

The two-day meeting is a follow-up to November’s AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom, and comes amid a flurry of efforts by governments and global bodies to design guardrails for the technology amid fears about the potential risk it poses both to everyday life and to humanity.

Leaders from 10 countries and the European Union will “forge a common understanding of AI safety and align their work on AI research,” the British government, which co-hosted the event, said in a statement. The network of safety institutes will include those already set up by the U.K., U.S., Japan and Singapore since the Bletchley meeting, it said.