Tech giants unite on safeguards for super intelligence

Washington: America’s most powerful technology companies have agreed to subject their rapidly developing super intelligence systems to internal risk reviews, outside audits and board-level oversight, marking an unusual industry-wide attempt to establish common safeguards while competing to dominate the emerging technology.

The commitments emerged from a White House meeting with President Donald Trump that brought together leaders of companies at the forefront of the technology race, despite differences among them over the scale of the risks posed by increasingly powerful systems.

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg gave one of the clearest explanations of the agreement, describing it as “the White House accord” on developing the technology safely.

“The basic idea is that we wanna give the American people and our customers confidence that the technology works in the way that we intend,” Zuckerberg said.

He said companies had agreed on “principles and commitments” that included robust internal controls and mechanisms to detect problems.

Those safeguards would be accompanied by “multiple layers” of auditing and oversight, he said, beginning with internal risk reviews and extending to outside auditors and evaluators.

The companies also agreed that their boards of directors would independently review reports produced by auditors.

“The idea isn’t that this is the only thing that we will ever do. It is that this is a start and an accord that the whole industry could come to,” Zuckerberg said.

Google chief Sundar Pichai called the moment “historic and consequential” and said the industry recognised both the potential benefits and risks.

“We have to make sure we are addressing the risks, and the president has asked us as an industry to step up,” Pichai said.

Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, also cautioned that the technology presented risks even as he emphasised its potential.

“AI has incredible benefits,” Amodei said. “But I think the technology has very real risks.”

“The mechanism, how we address those risks is still under discussion,” he added. “But we all need to work, we all need to work together to make sure that we can win and we can win safely.”

Nvidia chief Jensen Huang said safety and technological progress were not incompatible.

“There’s no conflict between innovation, technology and safety,” Huang said. “We’re gonna advance this technology that is so consequential to humanity and so consequential to the future prosperity of our nation, and we’re gonna do it responsibly and safely.”

Trump repeatedly stressed industry self-policing.

“This is going to be all for the good and we’re gonna have it be nice and safe,” Trump said. “And they’re really gonna be policing each other.”

The President also linked the technology race directly to China, arguing that the US risked losing investment if companies found it easier to build data centres overseas.

Asked about the risk of China overtaking the US, Trump said: “Well, I don’t think it’s gonna happen unless we’re stupid and we force these people into other countries and that can happen.” Later, he sharpened the warning.

“Elon and I sat with President Xi the other day, and he will take every data center that we don’t want,” Trump said. “They want every data center. They want it because that’s great for China. Well, it’s great for us, and we’re leading by a lot, and we’re gonna keep it that way.”

Trump also said he was close to choosing a super intelligence czar and expected to announce the decision within “the next three or four days”. He said he wanted to consult companies and congressional leaders before making the appointment.

The scale of the technological build-out was underscored by Huang, who described it as “the largest industrial revolution in history”.

“We have chip plants coming up, computer plants coming up, AI factories coming up,” Huang said, adding that the expansion was “creating a million jobs here in the United States”.

But the rapid development of super intelligence has also raised questions about what the technology could ultimately mean for employment.

Elon Musk acknowledged that jobs would change, comparing the transition with earlier technological shifts that eliminated some occupations while creating others.

“I think by far the most likely outcome is an age of abundance, where we don’t have just a universal basic income. We have universal high income,” Musk said.

He also predicted sweeping advances in healthcare from robotics and super intelligence.

“When you have robots and you have super intelligence, it means that everyone in the world can have better medical care than anyone here, including me,” Musk said. “And wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

IANS