US and UK refuse to sign AI safety declaration at summit
77 comments
·February 12, 2025snickerbockers
sam_lowry_
> You can't remotely detect that somebody is training an AI.
Probably not the same way you can detect working centrifuges in Iran... but you definitely can.
ExoticPearTree
Most likely the countries who will have unconstrained AGIs will get to advance technologically by leaps and bounds. And those who constrain it will remain in the "stone age" when it comes to it.
_Algernon_
Assuming AGI doesn't lead to instant apocalyptic scenario it is more likely to lead to a form of resource curse[1] than anything that benefits the majority. In general countries where the elite is dependent on the labor of the people for their income have better outcomes for the majority of people than countries that don't (see for example developing countries with rich oil reserves).
What would AGI lead to? Most knowledge work would be replaced in the same way as manufacturing work has been, and AGI is in control of the existing elite. It would be used to suppress any revolt for eternity, because surveillance could be perfectly automated and omnipresent.
Really not something to aspire to.
sschueller
Those countries with unrestricted AGI will be the ones letting AI decide if you live or die depending on cost savings for share holders...
ExoticPearTree
Not if Skynet emerges first and we all die :))
With every technological advancement it can always be good or bad. I believe it is going to be good to have a true AI available at our fingertips.
jampekka
“Partnering with them [China] means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure,” Vance said.
At least they aren't threatening to invade our countries or extorting privileged position.
miohtama
Sums it up:
“Vance just dumped water all over that. [It] was like, ‘Yeah, that’s cute. But guess what? You know you’re actually not the ones who are making the calls here. It’s us,’” said McBride.
consp
The bullies are in charge. Prepare to get beaten to the curb and your lunch money stolen.
Xelbair
i mean.. you need power to enforce your values. and UK hasn't been in power for a long time.
"If you are not capable of violence, you are not peaceful. You are harmless"
Unless you can stand on equal field - either by alliance, or by your own power - you aren't a negotiating partner, and i say that as European.
wobfan
> "If you are not capable of violence, you are not peaceful. You are harmless"
this is exactly the value that caused so much war and death all over the world, for decades and thousands of years. still, even in 2025, it's being followed. are we doomed, chat?
swarnie
It been that way for... 300 years?
Those with the biggest economies and/or most guns has changed a few times but the behaviours haven't and probably never will.
computerthings
That's what Europeans thought for centuries, until Germany overdid it. Then we had new ideas, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...
gyomu
If you’re making sweeping statements like that, why the arbitrary distinction at 300 years? What happened then? Why not say “since the dawn of humanity”?
mk89
I see it differently.
They need to dismantle bureaucracy to accelerate, NOT add new international agreements etc that would slow them down.
Once they become leaders, they will come up with such agreements to impose their "model" and way to do things.
Right now they need to accelerate and not get stuck.
enugu
AI doesn't look it will be restricted to one country. A breakthrough becomes common place in a matter of years. So that paraphrase of Vance's remarks, if accurate, would mean that he is wrong.
The danger of something like AI+drones (or less imminent, AI+bioengineering) can lead to a severe degradation of security, like after the invention of nuclear weapons. A degradation in security, which requires collective action. Even worse, chaos could be caused by small groups weaponizing the technology against high profile targets.
If anything, the larger nations might be much more forceful about AI regulation than the above summit by demanding an NPT style treaty where only a select club has access to the technology in exchange for other nations having access to the applications of AI from servers hosted by the club.
dkjaudyeqooe
> The danger of something like AI+drones (or less imminent, AI+bioengineering) can lead to a severe degradation of security, like after the invention of nuclear weapons.
You don't justify or define "severe degradation of security" just assert it as a fact.
The advent of nuclear weapons has meant 75 years of relative peace which is unheard of in human history, so quite the opposite.
Given that AI weapons don't exist, then you've just created a straw man.
logicchains
>The danger of something like AI+drones (or less imminent, AI+bioengineering) can lead to a severe degradation of security
For smaller countries nukes represented an increase in security, not a degradation. North Korea probably wouldn't still be independent today if it didn't have nukes, and Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine hadn't given up its nukes. Restricting access to nukes is only in the interest of big countries that want to bully small countries around, because nukes level the playing field. The same applies to AI.
Dalewyn
I love the retelling of "I don't really care, Margaret." here.
But politics aside, this also points to something I've said numerous times here before: In order to write the rulebook you need to be a creator.
Only those who actually make and build and invent things get to write the rules. As far as "AI" is concerned, the creators are squarely the United States and presumably China. The EU, Japan, et al. being mere consumers sincerely cannot write the rules because they have no weight to throw around.
If you want to be the rulemaker, be a creator; not a litigator.
piltdownman
> The EU, Japan, et al. being mere consumers sincerely cannot write the rules because they have no weight to throw around
Exactly what I'd expect someone from a country where the economy is favoured over the society to say - particularly in the context of consumer protection.
You want access to a trade union of consumers? You play by the rules of that Union.
American exceptionalism doesn't negate that. A large technical moat does. But DeepSeek has jumped in and revealed how shallow that moat really is for AI at this neonatal stage.
Dalewyn
>Exactly what I'd expect someone from a country
I'm Japanese-American, so I'm not exactly happy about Japan's state of irrelevance (yet again). Their one saving grace as a special(er) ally and friend is they can still enjoy some of the nectar with us if they get in lockstep like the UK does (family blood!) when push comes to shove.
mvc
> Only those who actually make and build and invent things get to write the rules
Create things? Or destroy them? Seems in reality, the most powerful nations are the ones who have acquired the greatest potential to destroy things. Creation is worthless if the dude next door is prepared to burn your house down because you look different to him.
consp
Sure you can. Outright ban it. Or do what china does, copy it and say the rules do not matter.
Maken
Who is even the creator here? Current AI is a collection of techniques developed in universities and research labs all over the world.
Dalewyn
>Who is even the creator here?
People and countries who make and ship products.
You don't make rules by writing several hundred pages of legalese as a litigator, you make rules by creating products and defining the market.
Be creators, not litigators.
cowboylowrez
if your both the creator and rulemaker then this is the magic combo to a peaceful and beneficial society for the entire planet! or maybe not.
mtkd
Given what is potentially at stake if you're not the first nation to achieve ASI, it's a little late to start imposing any restrictions or adding distractions
Similarly, whoever gains the most training and fine-tuning data from whatever source via whatever means first -- will likely be at advantage
Hard to see how that toothpaste goes back in the tube now
beardyw
DeepMind has it's headquarters and most of it's staff in London.
graemep
and what is the other country that refused to sign?
They will move to countries where the laws suit them. Generally business as usual these days and why big businesses have such a strong bargaining position with regard to national governments.
Both the current British and American governments are very pro big-business anyway. That is why Trump has stated he likes Starmer so much.
mrtksn
Is this the declaration? https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2025/02/11/pledge-for-...
It appears to be essentially "We promise not to do evil" declaration. It contains things like "Ensure AI eliminates biases in recruitment and does not exclude underrepresented groups.".
What's the point of rejecting this? Seems like a show, just like the declaration itself.
Depending on what side of the things you are, if you don't actually take a look at it you might end up believing that US is planning to do evil and others want to eliminate evil or alternatively you might believe that US is pushing for progress when EU is trying to slow it down.
Both appear false to me, IMHO its just another instance of US signing off from the global world and whatever "evil" US is planning to do China will do it better for cheaper anyway.
smolder
I think with a certain crowd just being obstinately oppositional buys you political points whether it's well reasoned or not. IOW they may be acting like jerks here to impress the lets-be-jerks lobby back home.
mrtksn
Yeah I agree, they just threw a tantrum for their local audience. I wonder, why they just don't make AI generate these tantrums instead actually annoying everybody.
michaelt
> What's the point of rejecting this?
Sustainable Development? Protect the environment? Promote social justice? Equitable access? Driving inclusive growth? Eliminating biases? Not excluding underrepresented groups?
These are not the values the American people voted for. Americans selected a president who is against "equity", "inclusion" and "social justice", and who is more "roman salute" oriented.
Of course this is all very disorienting to non-Americans, as a year or two ago efforts to do things like rename git master branches to main and blacklists to redlists also seemed to be driven by Americans. But that's just America's modern cultural dominance in action; it's a nation with the most pornographers and the most religious anti-porn campaigners at the same time; the home of Hollywood beauty standards, plastic surgery and bodybuilding, but also the home of fat acceptance and the country with the most obesity. So in a way, contradictory messages are nothing new.
Dalewyn
>Americans selected a president who is against "equity", "inclusion" and "social justice"
Indeed. Our American values are and always have been Equality, Pursuit of Happiness, and legal justice respectively, as declared in our Declaration of Independence[1] and Constitution[2], even if there were and will be complications along the way.
Liberty is power, power is responsibility. Noone ever said living free was going to be easy, but everyone will say it's a fulfilling life.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_I...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preamble_to_the_United_States_...
logicchains
"eliminates biases in recruitment and does not exclude underrepresented groups" has turned out to basically mean "higher less qualified candidates in the name of more equitable outcomes", which is a very contentious position to take and one many Americans strongly oppose.
mrtksn
In other words they get triggered from words that don't mean that thing. Sounds like EU should develop a politically correct language for Americans. That's synthetic Woke, which is ironic.
I wonder if the new Woke should be called Neo-Woke, where you pretend to be mean to certain group of people to accommodate other group of people who suffered from accommodating another group of people.
IMHO all this needs to be gone and just be like "don't discriminate, be fair" but hey I'm not the trend setter.
ExoticPearTree
Yeah, well, when you start your AI declaration with woke and DEI phrases...
> We pledge to foster inclusive AI as a critical driver of inclusive growth. Corporate action addressing AI’s workplace impact must align governance, social dialogue, innovation, trust, fairness, and public interest. We commit to advancing the AI Paris Summit agenda, reducing inequalities, promoting diversity, tackling gender imbalances, increasing training and human capital investment.
Wokeness and DEI is the point of rejecting this.
mrtksn
US just needs to have their culture war done already. These words are not about the American petty fights but it appears that the new government is all for it.
It's kind of fascinating actually how Americans turned the whole pop culture into genitalia regulations and racist wealth redistribution. Before that in EU we had all this stuff and wasn't a problem. These stuff were about minorities and minorities stuff don't bother most people as these are just accommodations for small number of people.
I'm kind of getting sick and tired of pretending that stuff that concern %1 of the people are the mainstream thing. It's insufferable.
smolder
"woke and DEI phrases"?
The way you're using these as labels is embarrassingly shallow, and I would hope, beneath the level of discourse here.
jampekka
Inclusive here means that the population at large benefits. But I guess that's woke now too.
logicchains
It mentions "promoting diversity, tackling gender imbalances" which clearly indicates they're using "inclusive" in the woke sense of the word.
pjc50
My two thoughts on this:
- there's a real threat from AI to the open internet by drowning it in spam, fraud, and misinformation
- current "AI safety" work does basically nothing to address this and is kind of pointless
It's important that AI-enabled processes which affect humans are fair. But that's just a subset of a general demand for justice from the machine of society, whether it's implemented by humans or AIs or abacuses. Which comes back to demanding fair treatment from your fellow humans, because we haven't solved the human "alignment problem".
thih9
And of course people responsible for AI disruptions would love to sell solutions for the problems they created too. Notably[1]:
> Worldcoin's business is to provide a reliable way to authenticate humans online, which it calls World ID.
robohoe
“Tools for Humanity” and “for-profit” in a single sentence lost me.
dgb23
From a consumer's perspective I want declaration.
I want to know whether an image or video is largely generated by AI, especially when it comes to news. Images and video often imply that they are evidence of something actually happening.
I don't know how this would be achieved. I also don't care. I just want people to be accountable and transparent.
tigerlily
And so it seems we await the imminent arrival of a new eternal September of unfathomable scale; indeed as we deliberate, that wave may already be cresting, breaking upon every corner of the known internet. O wherefore this moment?
antonkar
I’m honestly shocked that we still don’t have a direct-democratic constitution for the world and AIs - something like pol.is with an x.com-style simpler UI (Claude has a constitution drafted with pol.is by a few hundred people but it's not updatable).
We’ve managed to write the entire encyclopedia together, but we don't have a simple place to choose a high-level set of values that most of us can get behind.
I propose solutions to the current and multiversal AI alignment here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LaruPAWaZk9KpC25A/rational-u...
bilekas
Yeah, it's behavior like this that really makes people cheer for companies like DeepSeek to stick it to the US.
A little bit of Schadenfreude would feel really good right about now, what bothers me so much is that it's just symbolic for the US and UK NOT to sign these 'promises'.
It's not as if anyone would believe that the commitments would be followed through with. It's frustrating at first, but in reality this is a nothing burger, just emphasizing their ignorance.
> “The Trump administration will ensure that the most powerful AI systems are built in the US, with American-designed and manufactured chips,”
Sure, those american AI chips that are just pumping out right now. You'd think the administration would have advisers who know how things work.
blarg1
computer says no
AI isn't like nuclear fission. You can't remotely detect that somebody is training an AI. It's far too late to sequester all the information related to AI like what was done with uranium enrichment. The equipment needed to train AI is cheap and ubiquitous.
These "safety declarations" are toothless and impossible to enforce. You can't stop AI, you need to adapt. Video and pictures will soon have no evidentiary value. Real life relationships must be valued over online relationships because you know the other person is real. It's unfortunate, but nothing AI is "disrupting" existed 200 years ago and people will learn to adapt like they always have.
To quote the fictional comic book villain Toyo Harada, "none of you can stop me. Not any one of you individually nor the whole of you collectively."