The Duke and Duchess of Sussex founded the Parents’ Network, and they work closely with Project Healthy Minds. Within that work, they’re focused a lot on social media and how people – adults and children – behave online and interact within online communities. I would imagine that Harry in particular has been following the AI chatbot problems, from Grok turning into a Nazi, to people falling in love with various chatbots, to the chatbots who seemingly encourage self-harm. Well, Harry and Meghan have now signed on to a petition to warn of AI’s threat to humanity and to encourage a ban on AI “superintelligence.” By signing on to this petition/letter, they joined a motley crew of scientists, engineers, national security experts, artists, mental health experts, Christian leaders and Steve F–king Bannon.

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan have joined prominent computer scientists, economists, artists, evangelical Christian leaders and American conservative commentators Steve Bannon and Glenn Beck to call for a ban on AI “superintelligence” that threatens humanity. The letter, released Wednesday by a politically and geographically diverse group of public figures, is squarely aimed at tech giants like Google, OpenAI and Meta Platforms that are racing each other to build a form of artificial intelligence designed to surpass humans at many tasks.

The 30-word statement says: “We call for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and strong public buy-in.”

In a preamble, the letter notes that AI tools may bring health and prosperity, but alongside those tools, “many leading AI companies have the stated goal of building superintelligence in the coming decade that can significantly outperform all humans on essentially all cognitive tasks. This has raised concerns, ranging from human economic obsolescence and disempowerment, losses of freedom, civil liberties, dignity, and control, to national security risks and even potential human extinction.”

Prince Harry added in a personal note that “the future of AI should serve humanity, not replace it. I believe the true test of progress will be not how fast we move, but how wisely we steer. There is no second chance.” Signing alongside the Duke of Sussex was his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.

“This is not a ban or even a moratorium in the usual sense,” wrote another signatory, Stuart Russell, an AI pioneer and computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s simply a proposal to require adequate safety measures for a technology that, according to its developers, has a significant chance to cause human extinction. Is that too much to ask?”

Also signing were AI pioneers Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, co-winners of the Turing Award, computer science’s top prize. Hinton also won a Nobel Prize in physics last year. Both have been vocal in bringing attention to the dangers of a technology they helped create.

But the list also has some surprises, including Bannon and Beck, in an attempt by the letter’s organizers at the nonprofit Future of Life Institute to appeal to President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement even as Trump’s White House staff has sought to reduce limits to AI development in the U.S.

[From ABC News]

AI scares the sh-t out of me and I try to avoid it at all costs, even on Google and Twitter. I’m old enough to know how to do my own legwork to hunt down information, I don’t need to ask f–king Grok or Gemini. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, and what these signatories are trying to do is simply get these enormous corporations to simply pause for a moment and consider adding their own guardrails. Of course, I believe that most of these people would like to see the US, EU and many other countries regulate AI. Which I also think should happen (but won’t).

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.