Following the Prime Minister's speech about AI safety and the newly announced AI safety institute and plans for a Global Expert Panel, Dr Natasha McCarthy, Associate Director, Policy, at the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:
“It is imperative that we foster a safe and secure AI ecosystem in order to realise the enormous potential benefits of these transformative new technologies and we welcome the Prime Minister’s initiative in convening next week’s summit and establishing a new AI safety institute. We must manage and prevent the real short-term risks that AI already poses, as well as addressing longer term, systemic risk and preventing misuse wherever possible. Ensuring AI safety means creating the markers of trust that can enable safe and beneficial adoption, providing assurance to developers and users.
“There is a lot to learn from the wider engineering sector in creating ever-safer technologies and infrastructure, from developing tools and technologies to design for safety, to creating the institutions that accredit and certify people, skills and education to build professional practice. We must also learn from previous mistakes and accidents, particularly in safety-critical systems, to avoid societal harms as we shape the future of this fast-evolving set of technologies.
“We welcome the call for international dialogue on AI and look forward to seeing more detail about the Global Expert Panel. We believe engineering has a major role in mitigating risks while delivering real world benefits and would urge that engineering voices play a role in this initiative. We will be exploring these themes further at our event, ‘Building an AI Safety Culture’, at the AI Fringe on 2 November.”
