AI safety needs global standards and independent model audits

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 15:58

   And I think regulation, the right kind of regulation could help here in terms of making sure there's at least sort of minimum standards from all of the leading providers but it needs to ideally be a kind of international standards what is the right kind of regulation and again i'm kind of quoting yourself back from this documentary you're like i think we need more global coordination which worries me because we're getting worse at it yes which i think would be an unwavering truth yes for sure i mean that's like it's sort of crazy the timing that we're in right with this most consequential maybe technology the world's ever seen at the same time as a very fragmented sort of international system. And it's not ideal, but I think we're going to have to try and do the best we can to at least come up with a sort of set of maybe minimum standards, some

2. 16:45

   benchmarks that test for undesirable properties, for example, deception. Nobody should be building systems that are capable of deception because then they could be getting around other safeguards. And then I imagine, you know, if things go well, some kind of certification process that basically it's almost like a kite mark of quality that this model has certain safeguards and certain guarantees. And so therefore consumers and companies can safely sort of build on top of it. And I think that is how it should go ideally, but it does have to be international because of course these systems are cross border and they're cross territory. Who is that ultimate verification system right you know you obviously started with theme park yes uh a long time ago yes brilliant don't put the burgers down too close to the roller coaster but you know obviously as a media company

3. 17:41

   i go through any media platforms and i don't know what's real or fake i'm always having to ask what's real fake who is that arbiter of verification yeah well i think there are i mean ultimately it's got to be government i think but you know the kinds of technical bodies that would be able to do the technical work would be like maybe the AI safety institutes. You know, there's a very good one in the UK that, you know, was set up under Prime Minister Sunak. And I think it's doing great work. And then there's one in the US and maybe some of the leading countries.

4. 18:11

   have the best research should also have an equivalent body that is staffed with high quality researchers too, that can actually evaluate and audit these kinds of systems against certain benchmarks. And I kind of like independently check whether they are meeting the right standards. If I could give you like a magic wand that was only applicable to AI safety, sadly, what would be your implementation idea program that you would put in place with this magic wand?

5. 18:51

   Yeah, I think we need some kind of international body, maybe similar to the Atomic Agency, something like that, that perhaps the AI Safety Institute sort of feed into. And the research community has to also do this and be involved in like, what are the right set of benchmarks to check what types of traits, what types of capabilities? Maybe there are other safeguards too, like, you know, it wouldn't be desirable to have AI systems, output tokens that are not human readable.

6. 19:17

   so you know in some kind of machine language that we couldn't understand i think that would introduce a new vulnerability so there's quite a few sort of things like that which i think most of the leading labs would agree probably not best to do and then these bodies would you know these institutions would test against those things and i think that would give the public confidence and and you know academia could be involved as well as well as civil society that these systems which are going to get incredibly powerful have been independently checked and audited that's it your