PARIS: More than 700 scientists, political figures and celebrities including Prince Harry, Richard Branson and Steve Bannon on Wednesday called for an end to the development of artificial intelligence capable of outsmarting humans.
“The initiative calls for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence until the technology is reliably safe and controllable, and has public buy-in,” according to an open letter published by the Future of Life Institute, a US-based NGO that campaigns against the dangers of AI.
Signatories include the “Godfather of AI” and 2024 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics Geoffrey Hinton; Computer Sciences Professor at the University of California in Berkeley Stuart Russell; and the world’s most-cited AI scientist Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal.
A raft of other public figures have signed: Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, US President Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon, and former president Barack Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice.
The initiative is also endorsed by the Vatican’s AI expert Paolo Benanti and celebrities such as Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, and the US singer will.i.am.
Most major AI developers are striving for artificial general intelligence (AGI), a stage where AI would match all human intellectual capabilities, and even superintelligence, which would exceed them.
Speaking at an event organized by the media group Axel Springer in September, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose company created ChatGPT, said that superintelligence could be achieved within the next five years.
Future of Life Institute President Max Tegmark told AFP that companies should not aim for such an objective without any regulatory framework.
“Many people want powerful AI tools for science, medicine, productivity, and other benefits,” the co-founder of the institute Anthony Aguirre added on Wednesday.
“But the path AI corporations are taking, of racing toward smarter-than-human AI that is designed to replace people, is wildly out of step with what the public wants, scientists think is safe, or religious leaders feel is right.”
The open letter echoes another, published one month ago by AI researchers and sector workers during the United Nations General Assembly, which called for governments “to reach an international agreement on red lines for AI” by the end of 2026.
Celebrities, AI giants urge end to superintelligence quest
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Celebrities, AI giants urge end to superintelligence quest
- More than 700 scientists, political figures and celebrities called for an end to the development of artificial intelligence capable of outsmarting humans
Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base as fighting enters fourth day
- The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years
- Pakistan accuses Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it
KABUL: Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former US military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan.
The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkiye in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m.
The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s military or government regarding Kabul’s claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.
Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation that Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers.
Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having seized it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports “baseless.”
Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.
The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.
There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.
