LW - International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI: Key Information by Aryeh Englander

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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI: Key Information, published by Aryeh Englander on May 19, 2024 on LessWrong.
I thought that the recently released International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI seemed like a pretty good summary of the state of the field on AI risks, in addition to being about as close to a statement of expert consensus as we're likely to get at this point. I noticed that each section of the report has a useful "Key Information" bit with a bunch of bullet points summarizing that section.
So for my own use as well as perhaps the use of others, and because I like bullet-point summaries, I've copy-pasted all the "Key Information" lists here.
1 Introduction
[Bullet points taken from the "About this report" part of the Executive Summary]
This is the interim publication of the first 'International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI'. A diverse group of 75 artificial intelligence (AI) experts contributed to this report, including an international Expert Advisory Panel nominated by 30 countries, the European Union (EU), and the United Nations (UN).
Led by the Chair of this report, the independent experts writing this report collectively had full discretion over its content.
At a time of unprecedented progress in AI development, this first publication restricts its focus to a type of AI that has advanced particularly rapidly in recent years: General-purpose AI, or AI that can perform a wide variety of tasks. Amid rapid advancements, research on general-purpose AI is currently in a time of scientific discovery and is not yet settled science.
People around the world will only be able to enjoy general-purpose AI's many potential benefits safely if its risks are appropriately managed. This report focuses on identifying these risks and evaluating technical methods for assessing and mitigating them. It does not aim to comprehensively assess all possible societal impacts of general-purpose AI, including its many potential benefits.
For the first time in history, this interim report brought together experts nominated by 30 countries, the EU, and the UN, and other world-leading experts, to provide a shared scientific, evidence-based foundation for discussions and decisions about general-purpose AI safety. We continue to disagree on several questions, minor and major, around general-purpose AI capabilities, risks, and risk mitigations.
But we consider this project essential for improving our collective understanding of this technology and its potential risks, and for moving closer towards consensus and effective risk mitigation to ensure people can experience the potential benefits of general-purpose AI safely. The stakes are high. We look forward to continuing this effort.
2 Capabilities
2.1 How does General-Purpose AI gain its capabilities?
General-purpose AI models and systems can produce text, images, video, labels for unlabelled data, and initiate actions.
The lifecycle of general-purpose AI models and systems typically involves computationally intensive 'pre-training', labour-intensive 'fine-tuning', and continual post-deployment monitoring and updates.
There are various types of general-purpose AI. Examples of general-purpose AI models include:
Chatbot-style language models, such as GPT-4, Gemini-1.5, Claude-3, Qwen1.5, Llama-3, and Mistral Large.
Image generators, such as DALLE-3, Midjourney-5, and Stable Diffusion-3.
Video generators such as SORA.
Robotics and navigation systems, such as PaLM-E.
Predictors of various structures in molecular biology such as AlphaFold 3.
2.2 What current general-purpose AI systems are capable of
General-purpose AI capabilities are difficult to estimate reliably but most experts agree that current general-purpose AI capabilities include:
Assisting programmers and writing short ...