The humanity is facing challenges brought by the increasingly powerful AI systems. (PHOTO: VCG)

Edited by GONG Qian

AI systems need to be safe, controllable, and aligned with human intentions and values. This is a general global sentiment and as the technology becomes more powerful, humanity could be facing one of the most urgent global scientific challenges of the 21st century.

Currently, researchers and industry experts are cautious about the rapid development of AI and are calling for coordinating the international community to manage AI risks.

In the opening keynote address at a conference hosted by the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI), Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, predicted that in the next decade artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems will surpass human expertise in almost every domain. "[The] AI revolution will create shared wealth and make it possible to dramatically improve the standard of living for everyone. We must manage the risk together in order to get there," said Altman.

People worry that it will be difficult to regulate AI because all the unexpected possibilities are unpredictable. "It's a big challenge. But that doesn't mean people can't manage AI," said Huang Tiejun, director of BAAI and professor of School of Computer Science at Peking University. He said that humans share similarities with AI as both are "unpredictable intelligent systems." The facts have proven that ethics, laws and regulations are well-established norms for human beings.

In the same vein, Altman also emphasized that the world needs to establish international norms and standards in an inclusive process and put equal uniform guardrails in place for the use of AGI in all countries.

Considering the current geopolitical conflict's impact on the global AI cooperation, Wang Peng, a research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times, "We are fully aware of the urgency of AI regulations, but under the current global situation, as some in the U.S. are hyping [up the] China threat with AI as a key battleground, [to reach] global cooperation and international regulations could be hard, though some cooperation might be achievable in certain areas."

Altman specifically noted that, "We see great potential for researchers in the U.S., China and around the world to work together to achieve the shared goal. China has some of the best AI talent in the world," said Altman, adding that, "I really hope Chinese AI researchers will make great contributions here."

For the first time, we now have a situation where both East and West have the same incentive to continue building AI to get to all the benefits, but not go so fast that we lose control, the Wall Street Journal quoted MIT professor Max Tegmark as saying. This is something we can all work together on, noted Tegmark.

Fu Lili contributed to the article.