In a dramatic escalation of concern over artificial intelligence, more than 850 prominent figures from technology, academia, and public life have signed a declaration urging an immediate halt to the development of AI systems capable of surpassing human intelligence—until safety measures are firmly established.
The declaration, unveiled Wednesday, bears the signatures of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, and AI pioneers Yoshua Bengio and Geoff Hinton, alongside University of California–Berkeley professor Stuart Russell—each regarded as foundational thinkers in the field, according to CNBC.
Superintelligence, the statement warns, refers to a level of AI “that could outperform humans in nearly every intellectual endeavor.” As competition intensifies among tech giants like OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, Elon Musk’s xAI, and Meta’s new “Superintelligence Labs,” the signatories caution that society is racing toward potential catastrophe.
The document enumerates risks including “human economic obsolescence and disempowerment, losses of freedom, civil liberties, dignity, and control, to national security risks and even potential human extinction.” Advocates insist that development should be frozen until public consent and expert consensus confirm that such systems “can be created and managed without harm.”
The roster of supporters cuts across ideological and professional lines: retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and even media personalities aligned with President Donald Trump—Steve Bannon and Glenn Beck—appear alongside international figures like Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and former Irish President Mary Robinson.
Their collective stance underscores a widening divide between Silicon Valley visionaries who tout AI’s transformative promise and skeptics who view it as an existential gamble. Ironically, even the field’s architects share unease. Before leading OpenAI, Sam Altman wrote in 2015 that “development of superhuman machine intelligence (SMI) is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity.” Musk echoed that sentiment earlier this year, warning there was “only a 20% chance of annihilation” from AI surpassing human intelligence.
The declaration cites a Future of Life Institute poll of 2,000 U.S. adults showing that just 5% support pushing forward with superintelligence absent regulation. The vast majority favor pausing until the technology’s safety can be proven.
Bengio, one of the signatories and a Turing Award laureate, cautioned that AI may soon “outstrip most people in cognitive abilities,” framing the technology as both a salvation and a threat. “To safely advance toward superintelligence, we must scientifically determine how to design AI systems that are fundamentally incapable of harming people, whether through misalignment or malicious use,” he said. “We also need to make sure the public has a much stronger say in decisions that will shape our collective future.”
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People are really very stupid when it comes to the scam that AI actually is. In the world of science AI is fine because science has boundaries and protocols that cannot be ignored. However now AI is being applied to an area is is totally incompatible with. That is “social issues”. The algorithms are code that is written by humans. The massive amounts of data fed into the algorithms has little if any relationship to social issues at all. Therefore the results are useless. However, the NWO elitists would have you believe it does. Basically what AI in the social area is a propaganda tool to make the public believe exactly what the coders want to obtain. And because the results are compiled by a computer you cannot challenge it’s authenticity. Garbage in, garbage out still is the proper statement of fact concerning AI.