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Governments, firms should spend more on AI safety, top researchers say
Published by Jessica Weisman-Pitts
Posted on October 24, 2023
2 min readLast updated: January 31, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by Jessica Weisman-Pitts
Posted on October 24, 2023
2 min readLast updated: January 31, 2026
By Supantha Mukherjee
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Artificial intelligence companies and governments should allocate at least one third of their AI research and development funding to ensuring the safety and ethical use of the systems, top AI researchers said in a paper on Tuesday.
The paper, issued a week before the international AI Safety Summit in London, lists measures that governments and companies should take to address AI risks.
“Governments should also mandate that companies are legally liable for harms from their frontier AI systems that can be reasonably foreseen and prevented,” according to the paper written by three Turing Award winners, a Nobel laureate, and more than a dozen top AI academics.
Currently there are no broad-based regulations focusing on AI safety, and the first set of legislation by the European Union is yet to become law as lawmakers are yet to agree on several issues.
“Recent state of the art AI models are too powerful, and too significant, to let them develop without democratic oversight,” said Yoshua Bengio, one of the three people known as the godfather of AI.
“It (investments in AI safety) needs to happen fast, because AI is progressing much faster than the precautions taken,” he said.
Authors include Geoffrey Hinton, Andrew Yao, Daniel Kahneman, Dawn Song and Yuval Noah Harari.
Since the launch of OpenAI’s generative AI models, top academics and prominent CEOs such as Elon Musk have warned about the risks on AI, including calling for a six-month pause in developing powerful AI systems.
Some companies have countered this, saying they will face high compliance costs and disproportionate liability risks.
“Companies will complain that it’s too hard to satisfy regulations – that ‘regulation stifles innovation’ – that’s ridiculous,” said British computer scientist Stuart Russell.
“There are more regulations on sandwich shops than there are on AI companies.”
(This story has been refiled to show the researchers wrote a paper, not a letter, in paragraphs 1-3 and 7)
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm; editing by Miral Fahmy)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think and learn like humans. AI can perform tasks such as problem-solving, understanding language, and recognizing patterns.
Regulations are rules or directives made and maintained by an authority to regulate conduct within a specific area. In finance, regulations ensure that companies operate fairly and transparently.
Research and Development (R&D) is a process through which companies innovate and improve their products or services. It involves systematic investigation and experimentation to develop new technologies or methodologies.
AI safety refers to the measures and protocols put in place to ensure that artificial intelligence systems operate safely and ethically, minimizing risks and preventing harm to users and society.
Innovation is the process of creating new ideas, products, or methods that improve efficiency or effectiveness. In finance, innovation often leads to new financial products or services that meet changing consumer needs.
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