United Nations (United States) (AFP) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that the US government would rename artificial intelligence “super intelligence” in official communications, as world leaders jostled over how to address the dangers of the fast-advancing technology. AI has become a major topic at the UN General Assembly after incidents of the technology falling out of the control of humans and warnings by company insiders drew global alarm and calls for better government supervision of the industry.
Speaking to the assembly, Trump stood by his firm opposition to regulating AI, while arguing the word “artificial” undersold the technology and voicing hope the rest of the world would adopt the new term. Super Intelligence “sounds much better” and “it’s much more accurate,” he said. The rebrand is the latest in a series of renamings pursued by the Trump administration, which changed the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” via executive order last year and, in August, renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America” amid a trade dispute with Canada.
The US leader also compared the warnings of AI safety advocates to warnings about climate change, whose human causes are affirmed by the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community. “The United States totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control…artificial intelligence,” he said. “Every major new technology brings challenges, and superintelligence is no exception,” he added. “The very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming…are now saying that AI is going to kill us all, that robots are going to attack us, and that everything is going to be a total disaster.”
Ahead of the UN assembly, leaders of more than 20 mostly European countries urged binding safety measures for advanced AI, warning that the technology’s development could outpace the ability to control it. AI superpowers China and the United States did not endorse the idea.
Speaking at the UN meeting, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Britain would launch an effort to establish global AI standards during its 2027 G20 presidency, while announcing an AI defense partnership with Washington to detect cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. “We will work towards agreeing a single set of global principles and standards to ensure the transparency and access we need to increase our preparedness and to ensure that AI development is safe,” he said. He earlier revealed London plans to use Britain’s role as host of the Group of 20 next year to push for a “single set of global principles and standards” around AI.
French President Emmanuel Macron proposed building AI technology independent from the great powers. “I don’t want anyone to become the vassal of one of the great powers,” Macron told the UN General Assembly, apparently in reference to China and the US. “Our investment capabilities must be pooled to build a cutting-edge open-source AI model, which we will share. We should not depend on somebody else.”
The US-based AI giants themselves are increasingly asking for global coordination on AI safety, with OpenAI’s Sam Altman set to address the UN Security Council on Wednesday. Anthropic chief Dario Amodei and Hugging Face co-founder Clement Delangue will also participate remotely, a French official said Tuesday. France, which holds the Security Council presidency this month, initiated the meeting and believes AI’s threat to international peace and security has not been sufficiently discussed at the UN.
UN chief Antonio Guterres, meanwhile, called for the US and China to start a dialogue on the technology’s future akin to US-Soviet engagement at the height of the Cold War. “Governments with the greatest AI capabilities have the greatest responsibilities to humanity, to establish channels for dialogue,” Guterres said in his address to the assembly. “At a pivotal moment during the Cold War, strategic rivals came to recognize the need to manage shared existential risks.”
China and the US are currently discussing creating a communication channel for AI concerns in anticipation of a Washington summit meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday.
© 2024 AFP
