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• Leading AI scientists, including Turing Award winners, gathered in Venice to address AI safety risks.
• The event focused on global collaboration to develop safety frameworks, emergency agreements, and verification systems for AI.
• Policymakers and experts, including former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, joined to discuss implementing these proposals globally.

Recently, leading global artificial intelligence (AI) scientists gathered in Venice to call for urgent collaboration between governments and researchers to address the risks posed by AI. Among the experts present were Turing Award winners Yoshua Bengio and Andrew Yao, UC Berkeley professor Stuart Russell, OBE, and Zhang Ya-Qin, Chair Professor at Tsinghua University. 

The event, the third in a series of International Dialogues on AI Safety (IDAIS), was hosted by the Safe AI Forum (SAIF) in partnership with the Berggruen Institute.

Held at the Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice, the three-day event focused on the safety concerns surrounding artificial general intelligence (AGI). 

The first day included discussions on AI risks and the strategies necessary to mitigate them, with topics ranging from early warning thresholds to verification and international governance mechanisms.

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At the end of these discussions, the scientists issued a consensus statement, stressing that AI safety is a “global public good.” The statement highlighted three key areas of focus: creating global “Emergency Preparedness Agreements and Institutions” to coordinate responses to AI risks, developing “Safety Assurance Frameworks” to establish safety guarantees for advanced AI systems, and increasing funding for AI safety research.

On the second day, policymakers, including former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, joined the scientists to discuss these proposals. The group emphasized the urgency of implementing these measures in light of the rapid advancements in AI technology. The statement was presented directly to the policymakers, with discussions on how the international community could collaborate to achieve these goals.