An unlikely band of prominent business, religious, government and academic leaders have put aside their political differences and signed a new Declaration of Human Rights for the Age of AI.
The Pro-Human AI Declaration, released Wednesday with the support of more than 40 organizations, advocates the importance of humans and human values, as AI becomes more powerful and in some respects more human-like. Among the signatories are former Trump administration adviser Steve Bannon, conservative firebrand Glenn Beck and billionaire mogul Richard Branson, as well as consumer advocate Ralph Nader, Biden administration national security adviser Susan Rice and Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu.
“As companies race to develop and deploy AI systems, humanity faces a fork in the road,” the statement’s preface declares. “One way is the race to change: Humans are creators, counselors, caregivers and companions, then in most jobs and decision-making roles, concentrating more power in unaccountable organizations and their machines.”
“There is a better way,” the statement continues, adding that “reliable and controllable AI tools will enhance rather than diminish human potential, empower people, enhance human dignity, protect individual freedoms, strengthen families and communities, preserve self-governance, and help create unprecedented health and prosperity.”
The declaration was created by a coalition of organizations from across the political spectrum, including the Congress of Christian Leaders, the American Federation of Teachers and Progressive Democrats of America.
The Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group whose mission is to guide advanced technology toward beneficial ends and avoid large-scale risks to humanity, convened participants and facilitated the drafting process. The Declaration was drafted in a series of meetings and finalized after an extensive ratification meeting in New Orleans in January.
Also signed by AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, the declaration covers five key themes with titles such as “Keeping Humans in Charge” and “Responsibility and Accountability for AI Companies”. Within each subject area, a list of detailed statements describes the signatory’s pro-humanist ideology.
“No AI monopolies,” “Democratic authority over key transitions” and “Shared prosperity” are among several statements that cover the second key topic area, titled “Avoiding Concentration of Power.”
A senior fellow at Humans First, a nonpartisan social advocacy organization campaigning to raise awareness about the future of AI, and a former technology editor for Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, told NBC News that the announcement was “the product of a painstaking consensus among intellectuals and activists who have been thinking about the risks and downsides for years.”
According to Allen, the signatories spanned a broad “axis, with reasonable techno-optimists at the top and some of us quasi-Luddites at the bottom.”
“Like liberty and freedom in general, the ideal position is that every human being — even one’s ideological opponents — is essentially anti-human technology,” Allen shared in written comments.
AI systems have become dramatically more efficient in the past few years and months, with AI systems reshaping or eliminating software development jobs and surpassing the ability of scientists to create new tests to measure their performance in fields such as mathematics.
“Big tech is racing to create AI that’s smarter than humans,” said Brendan Steinhauser, director of the Alliance for Secure AI, a Washington, DC-based advocacy organization and former Republican campaign strategist. “The Alliance for Secure AI remains steadfast in its mission to put humanity in control of AI, not the other way around.”
“If we want AI to benefit humanity, not just Silicon Valley CEOs,” Steinhauser told NBC News, “then we have to come together to protect our future.”
Editor’s note: This reporter is a Tarbell Fellow, funded by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting artificial intelligence news coverage. The Tarbell Center receives funding from the Future of Life Institute, which is the subject of this article. Neither the Future of Life Institute nor the Tarbell Center had any input into the NBC News report.
