Bringing together senior scientists from around the world to mitigate extreme risks from AI

Past Dialogues

IDAIS-Venice

Western and Chinese scientists: AI safety a “global public good”, global cooperation urgently needed

2024
Statement

IDAIS-Beijing

International scientists meet in Beijing to discuss extreme AI risks, recommend red lines for AI development and international cooperation.

2024
Statement

IDAIS-Oxford

In the Inaugural IDAIS, International Scientists Call for Global Action on AI Safety.

2023
Statement

IDAIS-Venice, 2024

VENICE, ITALY September 5th-8th

Western and Chinese scientists: AI safety a “global public good”, global cooperation urgently needed.

Leading global artificial intelligence (AI) scientists gathered in Venice in September where they issued a call urging governments and researchers to collaborate to address AI risks. Computer scientists including Turing Award winners Yoshua Bengio and Andrew Yao, as well as UC Berkeley professor Stuart Russell, OBE and Zhang Ya-Qin, Chair Professor at Tsinghua University, convened for the third in a series of International Dialogues on AI Safety (IDAIS), hosted by the Safe AI Forum (SAIF) in collaboration with the Berggruen Institute.

The event took place over three days at the Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice and focused on safety efforts around so-called artificial general intelligence. The first day involved a series of discussions centered around the nature of AI risks and the variety of strategies required to counter them. Session topics included early warning thresholds, AI Safety Institutes, verification and international governance mechanisms.

These discussions became the basis of a consensus statement signed by the scientists, centered around the idea that AI safety is a “global public good”, suggesting that states carve out AI safety as a cooperative area of academic and technical activity. The statement calls for three areas of policy and research. First, they advocate for “Emergency Preparedness Agreements and Institutions”, a set of global authorities and agreements which could coordinate on AI risk. Then, they suggest developing “Safety Assurance Frameworks”, a more comprehensive set of safety guarantees for advanced AI systems. Finally, they advocate for more AI Safety funding and research into verification systems to ensure that safety claims made by developers or states are trustworthy. The full statement can be read below.

On the second day, scientists were joined by a group of policymakers, former President of Ireland Mary Robinson and other experts. The scientists emphasized the urgency of employing these proposals given the rapid pace of AI development. The statement was presented directly to the policymakers, and the group strategized about how the international community may work together to accomplish these goals.

MPR61870 (3)

Statement

ENGLISH 中文声明

The global nature of AI risks makes it necessary to recognize AI safety as a global public good"

由于人工智能带来的风险具有全球性,我们必须将人工智能安全视为全球公共产品"

Signatories

Yoshua Bengio

Professor at the Université de Montréal;
the Founder and Scientific Director of Mila
Quebec AI Institute,
Chair of the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI
Turing Award Winner

Andrew Yao

Dean of Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences
Tsinghua University
Distinguished Professor-At-Large
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Professor of Center for Advanced Study
Tsinghua University
Turing Award Recipient

Geoffrey Hinton

Chief Scientific Advisor
University of Toronto Vector Institute
Turing Award Winner

Zhang Ya-Qin 张亚勤

Director of the Tsinghua Institute for AI Industry Research (AIR)
Former President of Baidu

Stuart Russell

Professor and Smith-Zadeh Chair
in Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley
Founder of Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence (CHAI)
at the University of California, Berkeley

Gillian Hadfield

Incoming Professor at the School of Government
and Policy and School of Engineering of the Johns Hopkins University

Professor of Law and Strategic Management at the University of Toronto

Mary Robinson

Former President of Ireland, Chair of the Elders

Xue Lan 薛澜

Dean

Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University

Director

Institute for AI International Governance

Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar

Former California Supreme Court Justice and Member, National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Ethics and Governance of Computing Research and Its Applications

Fu Ying 傅莹

Zeng Yi 曾毅

Director of the International Research Center for AI Ethics and Governance
and Deputy Director of the Research Center for Brain-inspired Intelligence
Institute of Automation,
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS),
Member of United Nations High-level Advisory Body on AI
Member of UNESCO High-level Expert Group on Implementation of AI Ethics

He Tianxing 贺天行

Incoming Assistant Professor at Tsinghua University

Lu Chaochao 陆超超

Kwok-Yan Lam

Associate Vice President (Strategy and Partnerships)
at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore,
Executive Director of the Digital Trust Centre (DTC)
designated as Singapore’s AI Safety Institute,
Professor, School of Computer Science and Engineering
Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore

Tang Jie 唐杰

Chief Scientist of Zhipu
Professor of Computer Science at Tsinghua University

Dawn Nakagawa

President of the Berggruen Institute

Benjamin Prud’homme

Vice-President of Policy, Safety and Global Affairs at Mila
Québec AI Institute

Robert Trager

Co-Director of the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative
International Governance Lead at the Centre for the Governance of AI

Yang Yaodong 杨耀东

Assistant Professor at the Institute for AI
Peking University
Director of the Center for Large Model Safety
Beijing Academy of AI
Head of the PKU Alignment and Interaction Research Lab (PAIR)

Yang Chao 杨超

Zhang HongJiang 张宏江

Founding Chairman of the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI)

Wang Zhongyuan

Director, Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI)

Sam Bowman

Member of Technical Staff and Co-Director for Alignment Science, Anthropic
Associate Professor of Data Science, Linguistics, and Computer Science, New York University

Dan Baer

Sebastian Hallensleben

Chair of CEN-CENELEC JTC 21
where European AI standards to underpin EU regulation are being developed
Head of Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence
at VDE Association for Electrical
Electronic and Information Technologies,
Member of the Expert Advisory Board of the EU

Ong Chen Hui

Assistant Chief Executive
of Business and Technology Group at
the Infocomm and Media Development Authority (IMDA), Singapore.

Fynn Heide

Executive Director, Safe AI Forum

Conor McGurk

Managing Director, Safe AI Forum

Saad Siddiqui

Safe AI Forum

Isabella Duan

Safe AI Forum

Adam Gleave

Founder and CEO, FAR AI

Xin Chen

PhD Student, ETH Zurich

IDAIS-Beijing, 2024

BEIJING, CHINA March 10th-11th

International scientists meet in Beijing to discuss extreme AI risks, recommend red lines for AI development and international cooperation.

Leading global AI scientists convened in Beijing for the second International Dialogue on AI Safety (IDAIS-Beijing), hosted by the Safe AI Forum in collaboration with the Beijing Academy of AI (BAAI). During the event, computer scientists including Turing Award winners Yoshua Bengio, Andrew Yao, and Geoffrey Hinton and the Founding & current BAAI Chairmans HongJiang Zhang and Huang Tiejun worked with governance experts such as Tsinghua professor Xue Lan and University of Toronto professor Gillian Hadfield to chart a path forward on international AI safety.

The event took place over two days at the Aman Summer Palace in Beijing and focused on safely navigating the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) systems. The first day involved technical and governance discussions of AI risk, where scientists shared research agendas in AI safety but also potential regulatory regimes. The discussion culminated in a consensus statement recommending a set of red lines for AI development to prevent catastrophic and existential risks from AI. In the consensus statement, the scientists advocate for prohibiting development of AI systems that can autonomously replicate, improve, seek power or deceive their creators, or those that enable building weapons of mass destruction and conducting cyberattacks. Additionally, the statement laid out a series of measures to be taken to ensure those lines are never crossed. The full statement can be read below.

On the second day, the scientists met with senior Chinese officials and CEOs. The scientists presented the red lines proposal and discussed existential risks from artificial intelligence, and officials expressed enthusiasm about the consensus statement. Discussions focused on the necessity of international cooperation on this issue.

IDAIS-Bejing-1

Statement

ENGLISH 中文声明

In the depths of the Cold War, international scientific and governmental coordination helped avert thermonuclear catastrophe. Humanity again needs to coordinate to avert a catastrophe that could arise from unprecedented technology.”

在过去冷战最激烈的时候,国际科学界与政府间的合作帮助避免了热核灾难。面对前所未有的技术,人类需要再次合作以避免其可能带来的灾难的发生.

Signatories

Geoffrey Hinton

Chief Scientific Advisor
University of Toronto Vector Institute
Turing Award Winner

Andrew Yao

Dean of Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences
Tsinghua University
Distinguished Professor-At-Large
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Professor of Center for Advanced Study
Tsinghua University
Turing Award Recipient

Yoshua Bengio

Professor at the Université de Montréal;
the Founder and Scientific Director of Mila
Quebec AI Institute,
Chair of the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI
Turing Award Winner

Ya-Qin Zhang

Chair Professor of AI Science

Tsinghua University

Dean of Institute for AI Industry Research

Tsinghua University (AIR)

Former President of Baidu

Fu Ying 傅莹

Stuart Russell

Professor and Smith-Zadeh Chair
in Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley
Founder of Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence (CHAI)
at the University of California, Berkeley

Xue Lan 薛澜

Dean

Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University

Director

Institute for AI International Governance

Gillian Hadfield

Incoming Professor at the School of Government
and Policy and School of Engineering of the Johns Hopkins University

Professor of Law and Strategic Management at the University of Toronto

HongJiang Zhang

Founding Chairman

Beijing Academy of AI

Tiejun Huang

Chairman

Beijing Academy of AI

Zeng Yi 曾毅

Director of the International Research Center for AI Ethics and Governance
and Deputy Director of the Research Center for Brain-inspired Intelligence
Institute of Automation,
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS),
Member of United Nations High-level Advisory Body on AI
Member of UNESCO High-level Expert Group on Implementation of AI Ethics

Robert Trager

Co-Director of the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative
International Governance Lead at the Centre for the Governance of AI

Kwok-Yan Lam

Associate Vice President (Strategy and Partnerships)
at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore,
Executive Director of the Digital Trust Centre (DTC)
designated as Singapore’s AI Safety Institute,
Professor, School of Computer Science and Engineering
Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore

Dawn Song

Professor of EECS

UC Berkeley

Founder

Oasis Lab

Zhongyuan Wang

Director

Beijing Academy of AI

Dylan Hadfield-Menell

Bonnie and Marty (1964) Tenenbaum Career Development Assistant

Professor of EECS, MIT

Lead, Algorithmic Alignment Group Computer Science and Artificial

Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), MIT

AI2050 Early Career Fellow

Yaodong Yang

Assistant Professor

Institute for AI, Peking University

Head

PKU Alignment and Interaction Research Lab (PAIR)

Zhang Peng

CEO

Zhipu AI

Li Hang

Beijing, China

Tian Tian

CEO

RealAI

Edward Suning Tian

Founder and Chairman

China Broadband Capital Partners LP (CBC)

Chairman

AsiaInfo Group

Toby Ord

Senior Research Fellow

University of Oxford

Fynn Heide

Executive Director, Safe AI Forum

Adam Gleave

Founder and CEO, FAR AI

IDAIS-Oxford, 2023

DITCHLEY PARK, UK October 31st

In the Inaugural IDAIS, International Scientists Call for Global Action on AI Safety.

Ahead of the highly anticipated AI Safety Summit, leading AI scientists from the US, the PRC, the UK and other countries agreed on the importance of global cooperation and jointly called for research and policies to prevent unacceptable risks from advanced AI.

Prominent scientists gathered from the USA, the PRC, the UK, Europe, and Canada for the first International Dialogues on AI Safety. The meeting was convened by Turing Award winners Yoshua Bengio and Andrew Yao, UC Berkeley professor Stuart Russell, OBE, and founding Dean of the Tsinghua Institute for AI Industry Research Ya-Qin Zhang. The event took place at Ditchley Park near Oxford. Attendees worked to build a shared understanding of risks from advanced AI systems, inform intergovernmental processes, and lay the foundations for further cooperation to prevent worst-case outcomes from AI development.

Statement

ENGLISH 中文声明

Coordinated global action on AI safety research and governance is critical to prevent uncontrolled frontier AI development from posing unacceptable risks to humanity.”

在人工智能安全研究和治理方面协调一致的全球行动对于防止不受控制的前沿人工智能发展给人类带来不可接受的风险至关重要。”

team_image mobile_image

Signatories

Andrew Yao

Dean of Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences
Tsinghua University
Distinguished Professor-At-Large
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Professor of Center for Advanced Study
Tsinghua University
Turing Award Recipient

Yoshua Bengio

Professor at the Université de Montréal;
the Founder and Scientific Director of Mila
Quebec AI Institute,
Chair of the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI
Turing Award Winner

Stuart Russell

Professor and Smith-Zadeh Chair
in Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley
Founder of Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence (CHAI)
at the University of California, Berkeley

Ya-Qin Zhang

Chair Professor of AI Science

Tsinghua University

Dean of Institute for AI Industry Research

Tsinghua University (AIR)

Former President of Baidu

Ed Felten

Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs

Princeton University

Founding Director, Center for Information Technology Policy

Princeton University

Roger Grosse

Associate Professor of Computer Science

University of Toronto

Founding Member

Vector Institute

Gillian Hadfield

Incoming Professor at the School of Government
and Policy and School of Engineering of the Johns Hopkins University

Professor of Law and Strategic Management at the University of Toronto

Sana Khareghani

Professor of Practice in AI

King’s College London

AI Policy Lead

Responsible AI UK

Former Head of UK Government Office for Artificial Intelligence

Dylan Hadfield-Menell

Bonnie and Marty (1964) Tenenbaum Career Development Assistant

Professor of EECS, MIT

Lead, Algorithmic Alignment Group Computer Science and Artificial

Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), MIT

AI2050 Early Career Fellow

Karine Perset

Research Scholar

Professor of EECS, MITCentre for the Governance of AI

Dawn Song

Professor of EECS

UC Berkeley

Founder

Oasis Lab

Xin Chen

PhD Student, ETH Zurich

Max Tegmark

Professor

MIT Center for Brains, Minds & Machines

President and Co-founder

Future of Life Institute

Elizabeth Seger

Research Scholar

Centre for the Governance of AI

Yi Zeng

Professor and Director of Brain-inspired Cognitive Intelligence Lab

Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Founding Director

Center for Long-term AI

HongJiang Zhang

Founding Chairman

Beijing Academy of AI

Yang-Hui He

Fellow

London Institute

Adam Gleave

Founder and CEO, FAR AI

Fynn Heide

Executive Director, Safe AI Forum

Upcoming Events

TBA Spring 2025

We plan to host our fourth IDAIS event in the spring of 2025. For more details, contact us using the form below.