Political, business and academic leaders in AI and futures research from around the world request that the President of the UN General Assembly convene a special session on the governance of the transition to Artificial General Intelligence – AGI.

An Open Letter signed by 230 political, business, and academic leaders in AI and Futures Research calls for a UN resolution to create a committee of the willing to draft a UN Convention on AI which could lead to the creation of a specialized Agency for the governance and safe development of Artificial Intelligence in all its forms

Washington, D.C., September 9, 2024 – The Millennium Project, in collaboration with the World Academy of Art and Science and the World Futures Studies Federation, sent today an open letter to the incoming President of UN General Assembly, His Excellency Mr. Philémon Yang, about the development, security, and governance of future forms of AI called Artificial General Intelligence or AGI.

This Open Letter warns that within the decade many versions of un-regulated AGI could be released on the Internet. Without national licensing systems and UN coordination, humanity could lose control of AGI that can re-write its own code getting smarter and smarter, moment by moment, evolving into an Artificial Superintelligence far beyond our control or understanding.

During a proposed UN General Assembly Special Session on AGI, the letter calls for a UN resolution to create a committee of the willing to draft a UN Convention on AI with two sections – one on Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) and one on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – which could lead to the creation of a specialized Agency for the governance and safe development of Artificial Intelligence in all its forms.

In a recent international study on regulations and global governance structures for the transition to AGI to be published in the State of the Future 20.0 next week, a multi-stakeholder, hybrid (AI and human) governance system was rated the most likely to ensure current and future AI development aligns with human rights and well-being.

“Governing the transition to AGI could be the most complex, difficult management problem humanity has ever faced,” says Jerome Glenn, CEO of the Millennium Project. To which Stuart Russell, leading AI expert at University of California, Berkeley adds: “Furthermore, failure to solve it [management of the transition to AGI] before proceeding to create AGI systems would be a fatal mistake for human civilization. No entity has the right to make that mistake”.

Read the background article on the initiative on Substack’s Futures Digest