Google's DeepMind boss Demis Hassabis calls for 'guardrails' in AI

Hassabis, who is also a government adviser, tells London Tech Week there are 'incredible opportunities' but also 'attendant risks' with artificial intelligence technology

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Demis Hassabis speak at London Tech Week. Getty Images

The boss of Google's artificial intelligence arm DeepMind has told a major tech conference in London that there are both risks and opportunities with the advancement of AI.

Demis Hassabis told hundreds of delegates at London Tech Week there are “incredible opportunities” with AI but at the same time “attendant risks with any new transformative technology and AI is no different in that respect”.

Aside from being the head of Google's AI unit, Mr Hassabis is a government adviser on AI and among the industry experts who signed a statement saying that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority”.

The statement compared the potential risks from AI technology to nuclear war and pandemics.

In conversation with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Mr Hassabis said there was an “access issue” to prevent “bad actors using these technologies in bad ways”.

New safeguards such as encrypted watermarking could help tackle “deep fakes”.

But there was uncertainty about wider risks, such as “alignment, controllability, interpretability of these systems”, he said.

'Proceed with exceptional care'

“We need to understand and research those systems a lot more over the next few years to have a better handle on what the boundaries are of these systems, including the risks, and then we can put the right guardrails in place.

“In the situation where there's a high degree of uncertainty, but huge potential impact either way, I think the only the right way to proceed is with the precautionary principle.

“Proceed with exceptional care, be optimistic about what we can do with the opportunities, and use things like the scientific method to study and carefully analyse these systems as they get increasingly more powerful in the future.”

“International co-operation around AI is going to be critical – it's far too big a technology for one country and one company. We all need to come around and discuss this and make sure we reap the benefits and the minimise the risks,” he added.

Mr Hassabis noted the first-ever global summit on AI safety that is set to be held in the UK in the autumn.

Meanwhile, Mr Sunak said there was a need to consider the question of existential risk when it comes to AI.

“There's obviously concerns around misuse – how do people use AI to do things that are bad? People have always used technology to do bad things, that's not a new thing.

“It's important to put guardrails in place to make sure that we develop and exploit this technology in a way that's safe and that's secure.

“That's why the Summit [on AI safety] is important because it'll bring together people to consider those risks, make sure that we appropriately plan for them, discuss the right guardrails to put in place and the research and evaluation that we're going to need to do to make sure that we're on top of it.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak attends London Tech Week at the Queen Elizabeth II centre in London. Reuters

'Just come to the UK'

Meanwhile, speaking about the UK's technology sector as a whole, Mr Sunak said action was needed quickly, “if we want not only to retain our position as one of the world's tech capitals, but to go even further and make this the best country in the world to start, grow and invest in tech businesses.”

“That is my goal and I feel a sense of urgency and responsibility to make sure that we seize it.”

Part of the plan to seizing that goal is attracting talent to the UK. Mr Sunak noted that half of the fastest growing innovation businesses in Britain have a foreign-born founder.

“That tells you need a visa system that attracts the best and the brightest to the UK – and I think we’ve got one.”

“Whether it’s the new scale-up visa for companies that are going to get the talent they need, whether it’s our innovator founder visa which is globally extremely competitive, or the high-potential individual visa, that I created, which essentially says if you’ve graduated from a global top 50 university, just come to the UK – you don’t need a job offer; we just want to make sure that you can speak English and that you have a certain amount of money to support yourself. Otherwise, we just want you here, because we think that it will be additive for our economy.

“That’s a massive ‘we’re open for business sign’ for the world’s most talented.”