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The gains of AI should be shared with everyone.
The most powerful AIs are being developed by just a few companies. These companies are small in terms of the number of people they have, but enormous in terms of their value – and we expect them to get even bigger. If we don’t have policy that compensates society at large for making these companies possible in the first place, then an incredible amount of wealth and power will concentrate in the hands of just a few people. We could end up in a world where just the owners of the AI companies (and the government officials they are close with) control all our futures and lives.
We demand that sensible policy be enacted now to prevent this outcome. We don’t want to destroy the AI companies, but we should have legal triggers upon which the public gets a share of the benefits. This could come in the form of mandatory dividends, new taxation schemes, or public ownership of a portion of these companies – we would support any regulation that gives the public a slice of the future.
AI should not cause mass destruction.
There is a real risk that a superintelligent AI could actually kill lots of people. The research on humanity losing control of superintelligent AI is unsettled, but many top experts and Nobel laureates agree there is a nonzero chance that rogue AI could end the world.
Even if it’s not rogue, nations, companies, or terrorist groups with superintelligent AI would have enormous power to inflict damage. They could create weapons that could kill people without any human involvement, create new types of diseases for military use, or even come up with new weapons we can’t yet conceive of.
To protect our families and ourselves, we advocate that municipalities and states should act now to prohibit autonomous weapons systems from operating in their jurisdictions. We also support international agreements to ensure AI development is safe and does not risk mass destruction.
We want AI to go well. But normal people deserve a voice in their future.