Statement from Max Tegmark, Founder and Chair of the Future of Life Institute, in the aftermath of Anthropic refusing the Department of War’s ultimatum:

“Fully autonomous weapons systems and Orwellian AI-enabled domestic mass surveillance are affronts to our dignity and liberty. We highly commend Anthropic, OpenAI and leading researchers from across AI companies for standing up for the principle that AI should never be used to kill people without meaningful human control, and that domestic mass surveillance of US citizens is a red line that should never be crossed. We call on all AI companies to follow suit.

“However, our safety and basic rights must not be at the mercy of a company’s internal policy; lawmakers must work to codify these overwhelmingly popular red lines into law.

“All AI systems should be under meaningful human control. This is especially true for those that could be used in the taking of human lives. Moreover, current AI systems are inherently unpredictable and fundamentally brittle, unsuited for very high stakes applications. Even if they could be made effective, fully autonomous weapons would pose a threat not just to human dignity and liberty but to American national security: they could inadvertently fuel escalation, and would easily proliferate, putting cheap, accessible, weapons of assassination and mass destruction in the hands of non-state actors and adversaries. They should be prohibited by the US and globally.”