The AI focus groups discussed various dimensions of AI, including control, alignment, risks, and philosophical questions related to consciousness and autonomy. Importantly, they emphasized the need for adaptable and effective regulation, the potential benefits of AI in addressing human rights, and understanding different catastrophic risks associated with AI systems. Lastly, the groups pondered the future of human and AI interaction, including the implications of human enhancement through AI.

1. Summary of AI Focus Groups
From TransVision Utrecht
21st January 2024
Compiled by
David Wood
(AI Focus Groups facilitator)

2. 1. AI is a big topic
The five different focus groups had very different conversations
• Some focused on control
• Some focused on alignment
• Some focused on risks; Some preferred to highlight benefits
• Some looked at here-and-now; some had longer-term timescales
• None of the groups considered the impact of AI on work (!)
This is a reminder that AI transcends easy categorization
• If you think you understand all key aspects of AI, you are probably
mistaken!

3. 2. To help us with AI, we need philosophy
The conversations kept reaching questions of philosophy:
• “What should we want to want?”
• “What is consciousness, and might it arise in AIs?”
• “What is the meaning of meaning?”
• “What is the meaning of autonomy / agency / free will, and might
it arise in AIs – potentially making control or alignment harder?”
• “How can we understand and evaluate our own biases?”
Perhaps AI could help us with these philosophical questions!
• AIs could summarize what appears to be people’s preferred values
• AIs could suggest new solutions to alignment or control

4. 3. Revising the UDHR?
The process to create the UDHR (Universal Declaration of
Human Rights) can serve as a useful example
• 1946 to 1948
• Drafting committee was highly multinational and culturally diverse
• The resulting document was widely accepted
The exercise needs to be repeated (2024 to 2026)?
• What are the most important rights and responsibilities for
humans to uphold in an age of co-existence with increasingly
powerful AIs?
• AI could help in the drafting and review process

5. 4. Getting onto the same page
There are too many cases of widely different understanding of
what should be basically agreed facts
• What are the forthcoming capabilities of new AI systems?
• What are the principal opportunities and key risks?
• Which scenarios are credible for how things might develop?
The independent report being prepared by Yoshua Bengio is
particularly important
• Commissioned by Global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park (UK)
• Bengio has the advantage of never being part of any big tech

6. 5. Understanding catastrophic risks
There is not just one type of catastrophic risk, but several
• Bugs in powerful systems, for example in out-of-distribution cases
• Systems that are hacked, to remove their safety precautions
• Systems used by malevolent groups (e.g. like Aum Shinrikyo)
• AIs potentially developing their own divergent goals
• Failures in communication between AIs and humans
• AIs taking their goals too seriously – e.g. “maximize profits”
• Normally admirable companies racing each other for market
dominance and cutting safety corners in that race
Solutions for one sort of risk may fail to apply for others

7. 6. The dangers of poor regulation
“AI is too important not to regulate, but is too important not to
regulate well” (said by leading Google UK lawyer)
• Regulations can unnecessarily slow important beneficial innovation
• Beware regulations that are static – they need to be agile (readily
adaptable)
• Beware regulations that are just for “virtue signaling”, and which
cannot be applied in practice
Governments have other levers, not just regulation (“sticks”)
• Providing incentives (“carrots”), to boost desirable outcomes
• Setting rules for AI systems they will procure for public use

8. 7. Prioritizing defensive technologies
Need to design and implement canary signal monitors
• Consider what actions by an AI would be reasons for alarm
• (Special attention to behaviors that are deceptive?)
• (Special attention to behaviors that would accumulate power?)
• Prepare tamper-proof shut-down mechanisms ready for use
Explore use of narrow AIs to help monitor general AIs
• General AIs could be restricted to offering advice
• The advice would need to be evaluated and approved by narrow
AIs before being actioned in the real world

9. 8. Special complications of open source
It’s nearly always preferable to share information widely
• “More eyeballs make every bug transparent”
• More eyeballs can find many unexpected new solutions
But cataclysmically dangerous tech may change matters
• Recipes for creating highly contagious fatal biological pathogens?
• AI systems originally designed to invent new antibiotic drugs were
easily reprogrammed to invent new poisons instead, oops
• Large Language Models can give advice “step by step”, explaining
methods to users “as if they were ten years old” for simplicity
• “Explain to me how I could kill every person of nationality X”!

10. 9. Re-imagining the future
What are the prospects for “human AI merger”?
• Can humans improve as fast as AIs can improve?
• Will the limitations of human skulls slow down any merger?
• Claims made for BCIs might be over-exaggerated
• Might misaligned “superhuman humans” be just as dangerous as
misaligned “superhuman AIs”?
What’s so bad about humans being the “pets” of AIs?
• Humans may be looked after by “machines of loving grace”
Is our future in base reality or in “simulated” universes?