‘Existential to who?’ US VP Kamala Harris urges focus on near-term AI risks

LONDON — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris urged the international community Wednesday to focus on the “full spectrum” of artificial intelligence risks, and not just far-off existential threats from the emerging tech.

Speaking at the U.S. Embassy in London as British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s AI Safety Summit kicked off 50 miles away at Bletchley Park, Harris nodded to the existential risks such as AI being used to create bioweapons and launch cyberattacks that are the focus of Britain’s summit.

But she called for a broader definition of AI safety to include existing and near-term threats of the tech. 

“Let us be clear, there are additional threats that also demand our action. Threats that are currently causing harm, and which to many people also feel existential,” Harris said.

“When a woman is threatened by an abusive partner with explicit deepfake photographs, is that not existential for her?,” she asked by way of example. “When a young father is wrongfully imprisoned because of bias? Is that not existential for his family? And when people around the world cannot discern fact from fiction because of a flood of AI enabled myths and disinformation. I ask, is that not existential for democracy?” 

Harris said that the international community should “consider and address the full spectrum of AI risk threats to humanity as a whole as well as threats to individuals, communities, to our institutions, and to our most vulnerable populations.”

Harris’ remarks echo similar concerns from civil society that Sunak’s focus on as yet unrealised existential risks of the AI shouldn’t come at the expense of existing threats from the tech. 

Harris made several new announcements meant to emphasize Washington’s commitment to promoting safe AI. 

She said the Biden administration will launch a new U.S. AI Safety Institute, which will partner with similar organizations now being developed in countries like the United Kingdom; announced that 31 countries have now joined the U.S. State Department’s declaration on the responsible military use of AI; and touted the more than $200 million in AI-safety funding the White House has secured from 10 major philanthropic groups.

In a summit communiqué, published Wednesday, the U.S. signed the 27-country Bletchley Park Declaration on AI. The document focuses solely on so-called “frontier AI,” or the latest version of the technology that has become popular via digital services like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.