UN on AGI

UN on AGI
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​While many consider the UN to be a powerless organization, it does have considerable cache and headline significance at the least, and a recent report by the UN Council of Presidents of the General Assembly on AI, more specifically AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) seems to be making a passionate call to UN members to initiate discussions and build a consensus opinion on the governance of AGI.  The report calls for dedicated UN General Assembly sessions  on AGI and the development of an ‘observatory’ to monitor AGI research, track development, and potentially issue warnings.  Along with these discussions would be the formation of a certification system to ensure responsible development of AGI and the creation of a dedicated International UN agency to oversee responsible AGI development and usage.
Unfortunately, while the concepts are all valid and meaningful, there is little actual power behind the UN, which finds geopolitical ambitions far outweighing more positive societal goals, and has little or no influence over countries known to be ‘bad actors’ relative to other potential world threats.  That said, here are the salient points from the report:

• AGI could emerge within the decade due to unprecedented financial investment and R&D.
• AGI holds immense potential (emphasis on public health) for scientific discovery, industry transformation,, general productivity, and sustainability goals.
• However, the risks are irreversible once AGI is achieved and integrating AGI with critical infrastructure could lead to a point where human oversight is no longer ‘reliable’ (implies “no longer acceptable”).
• AGI could be used by malicious actors to develop weapons of mass destruction (Chemical, biological, nuclear, etc.) and could be massed into swarms as a new WMD category.
• Critical infrastructure could be at risk if AGI is used in cyberattacks against national systems such as energy grids, communication systems, and financial markets causing widespread disruption.
• AGI development and control are currently concentrated among a small number of countries and companies and could exacerbate global wealth inequalities, lead to mass unemployment, the erosion of privacy, and the eventual heightening of geopolitical tensions.
• Lastly, AGI could create its own autonomous objective that is not aligned with human values, citing that the potential to overpower humans are not far-fetched hypotheses but risks that could take place also within the decade.

None of these concerns, positive or negative, are surprising or unusual, and have been bandied about  for years.  The report however seemed to indicate that the AGI timeline was much shorter than what was expected only a few years back, when AGI was predicted for 20250 or 2060.  Now a number of AI industry leaders expect AGI to be achieved within the next 5 years, with some as soon as 2 years, increasing the urgency of the report, especially when speaking about ‘irreversible consequences’.  That said, it is hard to imagine that any major nation is going to do much more than provide lip service to anything that might slow down that country’s push toward AI development and there is little that the UN could do to rein in bad actors, either members or non-members, making the entire report valuable form an intellectual standpoint but far less so from a practical one, regardless of how correct or incorrect it might be.
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