Nobody wants to talk about AI safety. Instead they cling to 5 comforting myths
- Written by: Paul Salmon, Professor of Human Factors, University of the Sunshine Coast
This week, France hosted an AI Action Summit in Paris to discuss burning questions around artificial intelligence (AI), such as how people can trust AI technologies and how the world can govern them.
Sixty countries, including France, China, India, Japan, Australia and Canada, signed a declaration for “inclusive and sustainable” AI. The United Kingdom and United States notably refused to sign, with the UK saying the statement failed to address global governance and national security adequately, and US Vice President JD Vance criticising Europe’s “excessive regulation” of AI.
Critics say the summit sidelined safety concerns in favour of discussing commercial opportunities.
Last week, I attended the inaugural AI safety conference held by the International Association for Safe & Ethical AI, also in Paris, where I heard talks by AI luminaries Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Anca Dragan, Margaret Mitchell, Max Tegmark, Kate Crawford, Joseph Stiglitz and Stuart Russell.
As I listened, I realised the disregard for AI safety concerns among governments and the public rests on a handful of comforting myths about AI that are no longer true – if they ever were.
1: Artificial general intelligence isn’t just science fiction
The most severe concerns about AI – that it could pose a threat to human existence – typically involve so-called artificial general intelligence (AGI). In theory, AGI will be far more advanced than current systems.
AGI systems will be able to learn, evolve and modify their own capabilities. They will be able to undertake tasks beyond those for which they were originally designed, and eventually surpass human intelligence.
AGI does not exist yet, and it is not certain it will ever be developed. Critics often dismiss AGI as something that belongs only in science fiction movies. As a result, the most critical risks are not taken seriously by some and are seen as fanciful by others.
However, many experts believe we are close to achieving AGI. Developers have suggested that, for the first time, they know what technical tasks are required to achieve the goal.
AGI will not stay solely in sci-fi forever. It will eventually be with us, and likely sooner than we think.
2: We already need to worry about current AI technologies
Given the most severe risks are often discussed in relation to AGI, there is often a misplaced belief we do not need to worry too much about the risks associated with contemporary “narrow” AI.
However, current AI technologies are already causing significant harm to humans and society. This includes through obvious mechanisms such as fatal road and aviation crashes, warfare, cyber incidents, and even encouraging suicide.
AI systems have also caused harm in more oblique ways, such as election interference, the replacement of human work, biased decision-making, deepfakes, and disinformation and misinformation.
According to MIT’s AI Incident Tracker, the harms caused by current AI technologies are on the rise. There is a critical need to manage current AI technologies as well as those that might appear in future.
3: Contemporary AI technologies are ‘smarter’ than we think
A third myth is that current AI technologies are not actually that clever and hence are easy to control. This myth is most often seen when discussing the large language models (LLMs) behind chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.
There is plenty of debate about exactly how to define intelligence and whether AI technologies truly are intelligent, but for practical purposes these are distracting side issues. It is enough that AI systems behave in unexpected ways and create unforeseen risks.
For example, existing AI technologies have been found to engage in behaviours that most people would not expect from non-intelligent entities. These include deceit, collusion, hacking, and even acting to ensure their own preservation.
Whether these behaviours are evidence of intelligence is a moot point. The behaviours may cause harm to humans either way.
What matters is that we have the controls in place to prevent harmful behaviour. The idea that “AI is dumb” isn’t helping anyone.
4: Regulation alone is not enough
Many people concerned about AI safety have advocated for AI safety regulations.
Last year the European Union’s AI Act, representing the world’s first AI law, was widely praised. It built on already established AI safety principles to provide guidance around AI safety and risk.
While regulation is crucial, it is not all that’s required to ensure AI is safe and beneficial. Regulation is only part of a complex network of controls required to keep AI safe.
These controls will also include codes of practice, standards, research, education and training, performance measurement and evaluation, procedures, security and privacy controls, incident reporting and learning systems, and more. The EU AI act is a step in the right direction, but a huge amount of work is still required to develop the appropriate mechanisms required to ensure it works.
5: It’s not just about the AI
The fifth and perhaps most entrenched myth centres around the idea that AI technologies themselves create risk.
AI technologies form one component of a broader “sociotechnical” system. There are many other essential components: humans, other technologies, data, artefacts, organisations, procedures and so on.
Safety depends on the behaviour of all these components and their interactions. This “systems thinking” philosophy demands a different approach to AI safety.
Instead of controlling the behaviour of individual components of the system, we need to manage interactions and emergent properties.
With AI agents on the rise – AI systems with more autonomy and the ability to carry out more tasks – the interactions between different AI technologies will become increasingly important.
At present, there has been little work examining these interactions and the risks that could arise in the broader sociotechnical system in which AI technologies are deployed. AI safety controls are required for all interactions within the system, not just the AI technologies themselves.
AI safety is arguably one of the most important challenges our societies face. To get anywhere in addressing it, we will need a shared understanding of what the risks really are.
Authors: Paul Salmon, Professor of Human Factors, University of the Sunshine Coast
