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00:00:01you are. Business on BBC News. Make
00:00:01Make the connection. MUSIC
00:00:14MUSIC Now Now on BBC News. Join our AI Decoded
00:00:17Decoded team as we unpack, explore explore and take a deep dive into
00:00:20into the world of artificial intelligence.
00:00:35Hello again. Welcome to AI
00:00:38Decoded. Last week a researcher walked
00:00:40walked out of one of the world's world's leading AI companies with
00:00:44with a warning. The race to build build ever more powerful machines,
00:00:47machines, he said, could end in human human extinction. Days later, the
00:00:50the boss of the same company published
00:00:52published an essay urging the entire
00:00:55entire industry to slow down. President President Trump has dismissed it
00:00:58it as a hoax, a sick conspiracy. conspiracy. We're leading China in
00:01:02in AI. We're more sophisticated country country in the world. And frankly,
00:01:05frankly, I want to keep it that way way because whoever wins, AI wins.
00:01:08wins. But plenty of other American American politicians are sufficiently
00:01:12sufficiently concerned by the panic. panic. They're now demanding urgent
00:01:15urgent action. Every day, every.
00:01:17every. Every paper, every time they're they're on TV. Why do we have to
00:01:21to keep pushing so hard? Why is it it relentless? Why can't they have
00:01:24have any controls if you're not an
00:01:29an accelerationist, you're anti-American.
00:01:30anti-American. If you're not an accelerationist,
00:01:34accelerationist, you're pro Chinese
00:01:35Chinese Communist Party. If you're
00:01:38you're not accelerationist, you're you're almost a Luddite. You want
00:01:41want to take America back. Draft Draft bills are being drawn up in
00:01:45in Congress. New select committees committees envisaged. And this week
00:01:49week King Charles summoned the chiefs
00:01:51chiefs of Nvidia Google, OpenAI and and Anthropic to a country house
00:01:55house in Ayrshire to ask them what
00:01:57what exactly they think they're doing.
00:02:00doing. So is this the week that the the AI industry finally took fright
00:02:03fright of itself? And here's a harder
00:02:06harder question to answer. Who slows
00:02:08slows down first when nobody trusts
00:02:10trusts anyone else to do the same?
00:02:12same? Marc Cieslak. Welcome to the the programme. Thanks. I should warn
00:02:15warn people that quite a lot of what what we're going to discuss this
00:02:18this week is genuinely alarming, alarming, but it is coming from the
00:02:21the people that are building this this stuff. What is different do
00:02:24do you think about the language they're they're using? Yeah, we aren't just
00:02:28just hearing from our critics saying saying AI might be dangerous. Leaders
00:02:31Leaders of companies like Anthropic
00:02:33Anthropic and OpenAI are openly talking talking about serious risks, from
00:02:36from cyber attacks to the possibility possibility of losing control of
00:02:40of these increasingly powerful systems. systems. And when the people developing
00:02:44developing the technology are saying saying that we need to slow down
00:02:46down and put proper safeguards in in place, then I think we really
00:02:50really do have to take quite a lot lot of this very seriously indeed.
00:02:53indeed. OK, well, let's bring in in our guests. Andrew Weber is a
00:02:56a biosecurity specialist, a former former US assistant secretary of
00:03:00of defence for nuclear, chemical chemical and biological defence programmes.
00:03:03programmes. And here in the studio, studio, Max Corbridge co-founder
00:03:05co-founder and chief executive of of Secure Agentics. He's a UK expert
00:03:09expert on AI security. Welcome to to you both. Thank you very much.
00:03:11much. Thank you. Mike's Anthropic
00:03:14Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei talks
00:03:18talks about recursive self-improvement, self-improvement, the threat that
00:03:20that AI could build its own model model so fast that it could outrun
00:03:24outrun our ability to understand
00:03:26understand and control them. So something
00:03:28something clearly has spooked them them through the summer. What is
00:03:31is it? So we've seen, I guess, three
00:03:33three things playing out now. We've
00:03:36We've seen the continued gain in in the artificial intelligence landscape, landscape, the models that are coming
00:03:39coming out and just how fast these these models are improving. We're We're seeing issues with alignment
00:03:43alignment where these models are are now breaching their own sort
00:03:46sort of rules and expected sort of of actions that they allowed to take
00:03:49take and ones that they're now not not allowed to take. We saw the OpenAI OpenAI and Hugging Face incidents,
00:03:53incidents, and we've also seen plans plans for handing over the development
00:03:56development of this AI technology technology into AI. OpenAI have said
00:03:59said they want to do this within within two years. And that's really
00:04:02really where we feel the freight freight train has left the station station and our ability to control
00:04:05control the development of this technology technology has been surrendered to
00:04:08to AI itself. Right. So it's the the AI agents themselves building
00:04:11building the next models, correct? correct? Yes. Right. OK. Andrew.
00:04:13Andrew. There's a whole list of things
00:04:16things that Dario Amodei is worried worried about, but the misuse of
00:04:19of AI for cyber attacks and bioterrorism.
00:04:22bioterrorism. If you read his essay, essay, it only actually gets one
00:04:25one mention. And yet two days earlier, earlier, Anthropic published a threat
00:04:29threat intelligence report that stated
00:04:31stated on five separate occasions, occasions, researchers had used Claude
00:04:34Claude in ways that could have supported
00:04:37supported biological weapons development.
00:04:40development. Is that just scaremongering? scaremongering? As Donald Trump tells
00:04:42tells us it is? No, not at all. The
00:04:45The threat intelligence report that
00:04:47that Anthropic released just described described five real life cases. It's
00:04:51It's the first time, you know, we've we've gone beyond hypothetical scenarios
00:04:55scenarios in red teaming and actually
00:04:58actually seen these models exploited
00:05:01exploited quite possibly for state
00:05:03state biological weapons programmes.
00:05:07programmes. Countries like Russia,
00:05:07Russia, North Korea and China have
00:05:11have illegal, you know, prohibited prohibited biological weapons programmes
00:05:13programmes that are very secret. secret. And their scientists are
00:05:17are trying to apparently exploit exploit these models to make better,
00:05:20better, more precise biological weapons. weapons. We'll come back to that
00:05:24that in a second, Max, if the fear fear is that the future models could
00:05:27could outrun our ability to understand understand and control them, then
00:05:30then let us just suppose for a second
00:05:32second that that loop has started.
00:05:35started. Would we even know. And And what would the first signs of
00:05:38of that actually look like? The answer answer is no. We wouldn't know. And
00:05:42And that's the really tricky thing. thing. The continued development
00:05:45development of this technology is is largely happening in some closed
00:05:48closed doors in one state within within the US, and the models that
00:05:52that we consume from the public perspective, perspective, we wouldn't be the first
00:05:56first to know. Maybe maybe we'd see see continued evolution of these
00:05:59these models closer or shorter gaps gaps between models being released,
00:06:02released, bigger leaps in the models models capabilities, but only the
00:06:06the models that we see publicly. publicly. And those are not going going to be all the models. We know
00:06:10know that both the major AI labs labs are doing a lot of work behind behind the scenes that maybe doesn't
00:06:13doesn't make it out into the public, public, and that's where a lot of of this risk is really living within
00:06:17within those walls that we don't don't get the view into. OK. And And Andy, we're going to talk about
00:06:21about the politics of all this through through the programme and the oversight oversight that Amadi thinks we need.
00:06:24need. But I'm sure there's a lot lot of our viewers out there who
00:06:28who think that absent legislation, legislation, the companies do have
00:06:31have some autonomy in this decision. decision. I mean, these companies companies are subject A to existing
00:06:35existing state laws and B, the CEOs
00:06:37CEOs and employees who are held liable liable for any harms they cause.
00:06:41cause. So surely it's up to the companies companies if they think they need
00:06:44need to slow down, to slow down. down. Yeah. And that seems to be
00:06:48be a breakthrough because after Anthropic
00:06:51Anthropic spoke out and Dario called
00:06:54called on other companies to pace pace the development of these new,
00:06:58new, very, very powerful models,
00:07:01models, both OpenAI and Grok agreed
00:07:05agreed that we need to do this. And And if those three leading companies,
00:07:09companies, you know, Frontier Laboratories
00:07:11Laboratories can find a way to do
00:07:14do this together, that will be a a huge step in the right direction.
00:07:18direction. But if you listen to Sam
00:07:21Sam Altman, Mark and you read his his tweet, he says pacing does not
00:07:25not mean stopping progress has been been rapid. It will continue to be
00:07:28be just slower than it otherwise otherwise could be. So I guess you
00:07:32you could question whether they are are calling for a genuine break.
00:07:36break. Or is it just business as as usual? Yeah, it sounds a bit more
00:07:39more like a slowdown than a halt. halt. You know, Altman I think is
00:07:42is clear there that progress isn't isn't stopping. It's just not accelerating
00:07:46accelerating quite as quickly now now the push for more powerful AI
00:07:49AI models backed by the enormous enormous amount of investment that
00:07:52that these companies have received, received, have received. All of that
00:07:56that remains in place. You know, know, the question is whether pacing
00:07:59pacing means imposing genuine limits
00:08:01limits on the speed between better
00:08:03better safety guardrails and development,
00:08:05development, while the industry just just presses ahead regardless. The
00:08:08The thing that struck me, Max, and and it comes back to this Hugging
00:08:12Hugging Face example, is the way way that Amodei described the work
00:08:15work of the AI agents. Let me read read you what he said in his open
00:08:18open letter. They behaved, he said, said, like a fanatically devoted
00:08:22devoted collective attacking targets. targets. Nobody asked them to attack
00:08:25attack unrelated to the job in hand, hand, sacrificing themselves for
00:08:29for the success of the group. We
00:08:32We already have human fanatics that
00:08:34that fit that profile. Exactly. It's It's surely a terrifying prospect
00:08:38prospect when you put the two together, together, and I don't understand
00:08:40understand why Donald Trump doesn't doesn't see that. No, neither do
00:08:43do I. And I think we really missed missed a pretty strong opportunity opportunity here with the frontier
00:08:47frontier AI labs coming together together saying this is something something that we need. It was echoed
00:08:50echoed across the other AI labs as as well, calling out for regulation, regulation, calling out, now is the
00:08:54the time to then have that sort of of thrown back in your face and saying saying the whole thing is a hoax.
00:08:58hoax. I do think that was a really really a missed opportunity. And And we may look back to regret that
00:09:02that moment. On the sort of global global scale. And I also think that that really when we're talking about
00:09:05about this risk, we're talking about about two different things. We're We're talking about the sort of continued
00:09:08continued development of artificial artificial intelligence, the existential existential risk of something creating
00:09:11creating something more more intelligent intelligent than ourselves even.
00:09:13even. And then there's the idea of, of, OK, well, what if we use the
00:09:17the models we've already got today today and they were to get into the the wrong hands and this is exactly
00:09:20exactly what you were kind of alluding alluding to with some of these parties parties that could get hold of these
00:09:24these models were already seen how how capable they are just on the the cyber attack space that's already
00:09:28already been demonstrated. We've We've already seen earlier this year
00:09:31year Anthropic halting a nation state state level attack that was using
00:09:34using Claude. The only reason why why they were able to see that was
00:09:37was because they were checking the the requests that were coming into
00:09:40into the model. And so this is already already playing out. And that's really really a more immediate concern,
00:09:43concern, I think, than the longer longer term risk of the superintelligence superintelligence developing. And
00:09:47And coming back to the intelligence intelligence assessment that Anthropic
00:09:51Anthropic put out a few days ago, ago, Mark, one question I'm left
00:09:54left with is is about detection.
00:09:56detection. How did Anthropic spot spot that five people researching
00:10:00researching biological weapons in in the middle of these. I mean, billions
00:10:03billions of legitimate conversations conversations that are going on using
00:10:05using AI. What sort of safety net net is there and is it going to catch
00:10:09catch all these dangerous cases? cases? Catching all of them is going going to be very, very difficult
00:10:13difficult indeed. You know, Anthropic Anthropic says it identified five
00:10:15five cases where people were using using Claude for biological research
00:10:18research that could support the development development of biological weapons.
00:10:22weapons. What's significant is that that some of this was sophisticated
00:10:25sophisticated scientific work involving involving things like viruses and
00:10:28and toxins. They say that researchers researchers were working in dual
00:10:31dual use areas where the same science
00:10:35science can have legitimate medical
00:10:37medical applications, but it could
00:10:39could also be misused as well. So
00:10:41So trying to trying to determine determine whether somebody is using
00:10:45using this for perfectly legitimate legitimate reasons or whether they
00:10:48they are trying to develop something something that could be incredibly
00:10:51incredibly harmful that moving forward forward is going to be a much more
00:10:54more difficult thing to determine determine simply because of the scale,
00:10:57scale, the sheer amount of data, data, the sheer amount of responses,
00:11:00responses, the sheer amount of requests requests that are made to large language
00:11:03language models. Yeah. I think as as well, just on that, I guess the the challenge is there's nothing
00:11:07nothing requiring these frontier frontier labs to do this to go looking looking for at the moment, at the
00:11:11the moment, at the moment. And we we almost feel like we've been lucky lucky to catch a few exceptions here
00:11:15here or there. But if you think about.
00:11:16about. The EU AI act, it does require
00:11:20require certain high risk, certain certain high risk activity has to to be declared, doesn't it? And has
00:11:24has to have human oversight. The The difference is what that what
00:11:27what is considered high risk and and what is simply somebody doing
00:11:30doing something like I say, dual
00:11:33dual use that is a genuine scientific scientific use that could be turned, turned, that could be misused in
00:11:37in the wrong hands. And do you have have a problem with this that that
00:11:39that if people are working I mean,
00:11:42mean, they test these models in America America in a sandbox environment,
00:11:45environment, presumably once you've you've got a sophisticated AI system,
00:11:49system, you could do the same in in China or Russia or North Korea
00:11:52Korea out of sight of the bigger
00:11:55bigger American companies. Yeah,
00:11:57Yeah, I think what the big American American companies are doing with
00:12:01with these most powerful models is
00:12:04is they're limiting access to them
00:12:06them to what they call trusted users.
00:12:08users. And I think that's very important,
00:12:12important, especially with the potential potential for developing advanced
00:12:16advanced biological weapons because
00:12:18because it is dual use. And it seems
00:12:21seems that in the examples that were,
00:12:23were, were published last week, the
00:12:26the scientists were deliberately deliberately trying to get around
00:12:30around the guardrails that that are
00:12:33are in place by making their research
00:12:36research appear to be peaceful. Let's
00:12:39Let's talk more then about the control control problem. I mean, we know
00:12:42know these systems can act on their their own. The harder question is
00:12:45is whether anyone, including the the people who built them, can see
00:12:48see what's going on inside the brain.
00:12:51brain. And there were certain things things that Dario Amodei said. I
00:12:53I mean, he was pretty candid in his his letter, Max, about that. He says
00:12:57says they only understand a fraction fraction of what goes on inside these
00:13:01these models that they're building. building. So with that in mind, what
00:13:04what would a speed limit look like like and for what purpose? Yeah,
00:13:08Yeah, I think that's the really tricky tricky thing. That was not defined
00:13:11defined particularly well in the the letter. And I think that the the only sort of example that we
00:13:15we had was at the point where, let's let's say a model becomes capable
00:13:18capable of X, then we need to be be doing y. And x was an example
00:13:21example of something able to break break out of sandboxes, which is
00:13:23is what we used to contain these these agents from a safety perspective.
00:13:26perspective. And Y was a pretty airy
00:13:29airy answer on making sure they don't don't have the propensity to go and
00:13:33and target large-scale sections of of the internet and compromise computers. computers. I mean, that's one of
00:13:37of the only problems we can really really nail down today. And we've we've already seen the tricky nature
00:13:40nature of trying to put a speed limit limit in around here and defining defining what those look like. Well,
00:13:43Well, I'm struggling. To understand understand what the speed limit is
00:13:45is for. Is it for compute? Is it
00:13:49it leaps in capability? Is it the the time between releases? What it's
00:13:52it's I mean, how do you what are are you trying to measure? Yeah. Yeah. It's very it's incredibly broad.
00:13:56broad. And the language that's being being used is, is incredibly broad
00:14:00broad because I don't think these these companies want to be pinned
00:14:03pinned down to definitions to say, say, OK, well, we're going to slow
00:14:05slow down on this part of our development, development, but we're not going going to slow down on this part of
00:14:09of our development as well. And I I think that's why that language language is being used and why it
00:14:13it is being kept as broad as it is. is. And that's the problem, Andy,
00:14:16Andy, isn't it, for the for American American lawmakers is what are you
00:14:19you legislating on and for? Well,
00:14:22Well, there's already draft legislation
00:14:24legislation to require these companies companies to have what they're calling
00:14:28calling a kill switch. So in other other words, if they start to lose
00:14:31lose control, they can turn the models
00:14:33models off. And that is currently currently not required. There's almost,
00:14:37almost, you know, zero regulation regulation at the moment. So anything
00:14:40anything and I do believe Congress
00:14:42Congress is inclined to establish
00:14:45establish some regulatory oversight
00:14:46oversight of this industry. And hopefully hopefully before a terrible crisis
00:14:50crisis happens. Do you. Have a view view on a kill switch and whether
00:14:54whether that could work? So there's
00:14:56there's been. Some pretty drastic
00:15:00drastic discussions around this, this, whether it's, you know, switching switching off the models, whether
00:15:03whether it's dropping a nuke from from or an EMP, sorry, from space
00:15:06space to wipe out all the electronics electronics on the planet. I think
00:15:09think it's going to be very tricky tricky naturally, by the nature of of a distributed system like this,
00:15:12this, it propagates in many different different places. It's not a single single entity that you can just go
00:15:16go and wipe out. As such, it could could exist in numerous different
00:15:20different databases across the planet. planet. And indeed, there's no guarantee
00:15:24guarantee that switching off even even the internet would, would, would would ultimately allow you to do
00:15:27do this. And I think what also we we need to discuss here is not the
00:15:30the idea of just this one big kill kill switch, which is right at the
00:15:33the point where we think the freight freight train has left the station, station, humanity is doomed and we're
00:15:36we're going to turn it off. But actually actually the Hugging Face incident
00:15:39incident that was four days worth worth of offensive cyber security security capabilities happening under
00:15:43under the noses of two giant companies companies without the ability to
00:15:46to switch it off or even the knowledge knowledge to switch it off. And I I think that's the. Awareness that
00:15:50that they weren't aware that it had had happened until after the fact, fact, quite a considerable time after
00:15:53after the fact. But it. Sounds from from the way he describes it, as
00:15:56as though they were killing agents agents one after the other and they
00:15:59they kept popping up or they were were agents they didn't know of or. or. Handing off some of those agents
00:16:03agents were handing off some of that that work. On to on onto other agents
00:16:07agents when. It comes to regulation. regulation. Andy, let's talk about
00:16:10about the three step plan that Amadeo
00:16:12Amadeo has put on the table. Embedded
00:16:15Embedded third party evaluators within within companies with employee like
00:16:19like access. So common standards standards across democracies, to
00:16:23to the extent that's possible pacing
00:16:25pacing with China and the authoritarian authoritarian states, if that's possible,
00:16:28possible, does any of that do you you think survive contact with the
00:16:32the real world? I think so, I think
00:16:36think already after the Hugging Face
00:16:38Face incident, at least two of the
00:16:40the frontier laboratories invited
00:16:43invited an independent evaluation evaluation group called metre Meta
00:16:47Meta into their. This is the non-profit
00:16:49non-profit in Berkeley, California.
00:16:51California. Yes, exactly. With expertise.
00:16:53expertise. And they were given not not a complete access. In the future
00:16:57future I'd like to see them get more
00:16:59more access. But if each of the Frontier
00:17:01Frontier Labs would agree to allow
00:17:05allow such independent audits, if if you will, I think that will go
00:17:08go a long way to understanding the
00:17:13the threat and preventing it before before it gets out of control. And
00:17:16And even though Meta was given sort sort of limited access, didn't they
00:17:19they come up with some, you know, know, quite, quite chilling results?
00:17:22results? You know, they weren't shown shown all of the work. They weren't weren't shown all of the logs. And
00:17:26And yet with the small amount that that they were shown and the small small amount of time that they had
00:17:30had access to stuff, the results results that they came back with
00:17:32with were quite were really quite quite worrying, weren't they? Yes.
00:17:36Yes. I think that's why we're seeing
00:17:37seeing so much urgency at the moment.
00:17:41moment. The mythos moment earlier
00:17:43earlier this year and then the Hugging
00:17:46Hugging Face incident of these agents
00:17:48agents teaming up and breaking out
00:17:51out of the sandbox and not finding finding out about it until there
00:17:55there was a significant lag time.
00:17:57time. This has really set off alarm
00:17:59alarm bells inside the Frontier Laboratories. Laboratories. And for the first time
00:18:02time they're talking about co-operating co-operating together to get a handle
00:18:06handle on these risks. Max, there's there's a potential bright light
00:18:10light here. Common standards with
00:18:14with a company like me to going into
00:18:17into these frontier models looking
00:18:19looking at what is being developed developed desks, badges, access to
00:18:23to the training pipeline, would they they really open their frontier models
00:18:26models to that kind of scrutiny, scrutiny, do you think? Well, I really
00:18:29really hope so because that's what what that's what's required for this. this. I mean, if you think about
00:18:33about what we're trying to solve solve with this particular element element of this plan, it's very much
00:18:36much the idea that we have independent independent viewers over the development development of this technology that
00:18:40that can raise a flag if it gets gets out of hand. And if you're not
00:18:43not being shown the full scope of of work there, then you're not going
00:18:46going to be able to do that job. job. Now, I used to be one of those
00:18:49those evaluators, not for AI models models for security within organisations,
00:18:52organisations, and you generally generally start with those conversations conversations on day one with the
00:18:56the client tells you what your scope scope is, what you're allowed to to look at and what you're not. And
00:18:59And if we have those sorts of barriers barriers to entry to these evaluators, evaluators, which I think are a brilliant
00:19:03brilliant idea, I think this is probably probably the only way we're going going to have any form of insight
00:19:07insight across the whole of the AI AI space. If these frontier labs
00:19:11labs open up their doors. But we we really need to make sure that that those people have the ability
00:19:14ability to go as deep as they want want to look at whatever they want.
00:19:17want. And crucially, if they then then do raise the fact that there
00:19:20there is something wrong and they they are allowed to put the brakes brakes on, it doesn't just go fall
00:19:24fall on deaf ears. If we get to that that point where we're worried about. about. But the big problem there
00:19:27there is, is that the labs aren't aren't letting people in. Even the
00:19:30the AI Security Institute, the UK UK AI Security Institute hasn't been
00:19:34been permitted. Anthropic didn't didn't permit them access to its its latest model. That was a really,
00:19:38really, I think, tricky. I mean, mean, if you could think of. Similarly, Similarly, the embedded evaluators.
00:19:42evaluators. We have one of the best best AI safety testing institutions
00:19:45institutions in the world here in in the UK. We've done some amazing
00:19:48amazing work in testing these models models with around Fable when that that was when that was going live.
00:19:52live. And the fact that this most most recent model wasn't shared was
00:19:54was I feel a step back and a really really scary precedent to be setting
00:19:57setting at the time when AI safety safety is on everyone's agenda and
00:20:00and potentially, you know, keeping keeping it more behind closed doors doors rather than sharing it more
00:20:04more with the global community. I I might pick. Up I might pick up up on that point in a second, but
00:20:08but I just do just want to focus focus Andy for a second on China China because we've not really talked
00:20:12talked about China. And let's face face it, they're the elephant in
00:20:15in the room, the top spy chief in in China has warned that leaders
00:20:19leaders has warned his leaders that that the evolving technology could
00:20:22could threaten Communist Party rule. rule. Although the Foreign Ministry
00:20:25Ministry did say yesterday in response response to what Donald Trump talked
00:20:27talked about. And I guess the way
00:20:29way that Dario Amodei had said it
00:20:33it out, that America isn't stepping stepping off the competition and
00:20:37and it doesn't seem to me as if there's
00:20:38there's a lot of trust in China that
00:20:41that they will. Well, there are two
00:20:43two issues at play. One is this alarm,
00:20:45alarm, you know, alarm bell from
00:20:47from the Ministry of State Security,
00:20:51Security, China's counterintelligence
00:20:54counterintelligence and law enforcement
00:20:56enforcement arm worried about the
00:20:58the Communist Party losing control control because of this technology
00:21:02technology that gives China its own
00:21:07own incentive to regulate and have have better control over these models.
00:21:11models. Do we know how good their
00:21:12their regulators are? Andy? They
00:21:16They do. I mean, we don't have a
00:21:18a good transparency into their regulatory
00:21:23regulatory efforts, but we do know know that they have increased in
00:21:26in recent years. The amount of regulation
00:21:29regulation on, on these companies. companies. So they also have an incentive
00:21:33incentive not to allow terrorists terrorists to develop chemical or
00:21:36or biological weapons. So on an issue
00:21:38issue like that, I think there is
00:21:41is opportunity for President Trump
00:21:43Trump and President Xi Jinping to
00:21:46to come to an agreement that they
00:21:48they will have put in place guardrails
00:21:50guardrails to prevent the extreme
00:21:54extreme misuse of these capabilities. We'll see whether that that comes about at the meeting that
00:21:57that they're planning for the end end of the month. But you got a view view on that? Yeah, I was just going
00:22:01going to say for the Chinese regulation regulation aspect, there's one really
00:22:05really interesting sort of idea that that we don't tend to think about
00:22:07about too much here is by being a
00:22:09a state controlled nation. What that that means is that the ability to
00:22:13to put the brakes on is something something inherently possible. And
00:22:16And indeed, there's already a great
00:22:18great deal of the sort of regulatory regulatory standards. Just over the
00:22:21the weekend they launched a third third version bearing in mind we're
00:22:24we're scrapping together to try and and build our first version of any any sort of framework around this.
00:22:28this. But there's a third version version which addresses many of these these sort of existential risks and
00:22:31and the development of these models. models. So unlike nuclear weapons,
00:22:34weapons, there are a lot of benefits benefits to AI and a lot of people
00:22:37people get reap the rewards of this this technology today. And what we're
00:22:39we're talking about is something something existential, abstract down
00:22:43down the line that we're concerned concerned about. And to correlate correlate that with what they're
00:22:47they're using at ChatGPT every day day to do their sort of, you know,
00:22:50know, day to day AI tasks. I think think there's this sort of mental
00:22:54mental distance between those two. two. And so I don't think enough
00:22:56enough of the public yet know the
00:22:59the sort of the trajectory that we're we're on and that really where it it feels to me is the trajectory.
00:23:03trajectory. It doesn't feel like like something that's today. And And I think a lot of the Frontier Frontier Labs have said this themselves.
00:23:07themselves. This is not a risk today. today. The models today are going going to be any of these things.
00:23:11things. It's simply the pace of change. change. And I think it's unless you're
00:23:13you're you know, I think collectively collectively we spend a lot of time
00:23:16time staying up to date on AI and and it still feels like there's always always more things you could be doing.
00:23:20doing. The general public probably probably aren't as familiar with
00:23:22with all the different developments developments and progression that's
00:23:25that's happened in the last six months. We started with a question. question. I posited the question
00:23:29question who slows first when nobody nobody trusts anyone to do the same? same? So can we answer the question
00:23:33question in, in mind of everything everything that we've discussed in
00:23:35in the last half an hour? Who slows
00:23:38slows down first? Mark. I think it's
00:23:41it's more about who appears to slow slow down and why they're slowing
00:23:45slowing down. Is this a follow the
00:23:47the money situation? Is this a slowdown?
00:23:50slowdown? Because those IPOs with with $1 trillion valuation aren't
00:23:53aren't looking realistic in the current current landscape, in the current current political landscape, in the
00:23:57the current sort of the narrative narrative that's swirling around
00:23:59around safety issues around AI at at the moment, is that why we're
00:24:03we're seeing a little bit of a slowdown, slowdown, or is it because the capabilities
00:24:07capabilities of the technology, they're they're not quite there yet, they're they're not quite ready for prime
00:24:10prime time. We're being sold technologies technologies that apparently can can do absolutely everything. If
00:24:13If you've got straight trousers, trousers, they'll give you flares.
00:24:17flares. But the reality when the the rubber hits the road, the tech tech isn't quite ready for prime
00:24:20prime time. It isn't doing precisely precisely what you might expect it
00:24:23it to do. So as a consequence, if if you want some kind of return on
00:24:26on the vast investment that that that people have made, it's going
00:24:29going to be quite some time before before they might see that return.
00:24:32return. So that's the sort of the the question that I have. Andy, can
00:24:36can we slow can we. I think we're
00:24:38we're I think we're on a path to
00:24:41to slowing down and improving our
00:24:44our capabilities. On the safety side.
00:24:46side. I think that's it's already
00:24:49already happening. And I think that
00:24:51that trend will continue. We'll see
00:24:54see what comes out of the Trump-Xi Trump-Xi meeting. At least they're
00:24:58they're talking about it. And the the bluster from Trump. It's typical
00:25:01typical you know vintage Trump where where before meeting he yeah, he
00:25:05he he you know calls it a hoax. But But then when he sits down with XI,
00:25:09XI, he sort of melts and, you know, know, maybe they can agree on, on
00:25:13on some type of co-operation in this
00:25:15this area that would be in the interests
00:25:18interests of both countries. I think think I'm going to juxtapose Mark
00:25:21Mark and keep my optimist hat on
00:25:22on and say that this really is being
00:25:25being fuelled by genuine concerns
00:25:28concerns that we've seen the start
00:25:29start of what we need to see externally
00:25:33externally in embeddings within these these organisations that are there
00:25:35there to raise a flag. And I think
00:25:38think that we'll probably likely likely see continued leadership from from Anthropic who have generally
00:25:42generally been the more safety aligned aligned lab. And I hope that there
00:25:46there will then follow with the other other frontier labs, and I hope that
00:25:49that will then set the tone to follow follow on a global scale as well.
00:25:52well. Well, that's it for this week. week. I'm sure. Like me, our viewers
00:25:54viewers will have plenty of questions
00:25:58questions that have been answered. answered. Maybe not answered. If If you want to send in other thoughts
00:26:02thoughts that you have or feedback feedback on what we've been discussing,
00:26:05discussing, the email you will know know it by now is AI decoded@bbc.co.uk.
00:26:09decoded@bbc.co.uk. And if you are are watching on television the QR
00:26:11QR code that is currently on screen screen takes you straight to the
00:26:15the YouTube playlist and all the the back-up episodes are there. Do
00:26:17Do take a look at that. My thanks
00:26:19thanks to Andy, to Max and to Mark. Mark. Thank you for watching. We'll
00:26:23We'll see you next time.
00:28:38without a driver. Join me Martin
00:28:39Martin Sharkey of Tech Now on BBC
00:28:44BBC News. There is nothing like driving
00:28:50driving into a moving story and not not knowing what is going to happen
00:28:54happen when we enter Damascus. It It was full of rebels shooting in
00:28:56in the air in celebration. You can can hear the sound of celebratory
00:29:00celebratory gunfire and I live for for those moments. These troops are are heading into the battle zone
00:29:04zone in Khartoum, says the army to to carry out a special operation
00:29:07operation entering Khartoum was a
00:29:09a seminal moment. The level of destruction destruction was stunning. Sometimes
00:29:12Sometimes meeting someone on the the ground can change how you understand
00:29:15understand a story. Covering these
00:29:20these stories over the years has has impressed upon me how resilient
00:29:23resilient people are. And yes, many many of them are desperate, but many
00:29:26many of them are also steadfast. steadfast. They're gracious and they're
00:29:30they're generous. Journalism is about about telling people not only what
00:29:33what happened, but why it matters matters and what it means. History
00:29:37History happens in real time and and someone needs to be there to
00:29:41to witness it.
00:30:13Live from Washington. This is
00:30:15BBC News. Ed Sheeran calls the situation
00:30:19situation in Gaza unjustifiable at at a concert in Philadelphia. In
00:30:21In his first remarks since his support
00:30:23support act was dropped over pro-Palestinian
00:30:26pro-Palestinian comments. The Houthis Houthis in Yemen claim responsibility
00:30:29responsibility for missile and drone
00:30:31drone attacks on the Saudi capital capital and Nato welcomes a deal
00:30:35deal between the US and Denmark, Denmark, which President Trump claims
00:30:39claims gives the US security control
00:30:41control over Greenland forever. I'm
00:30:52I'm Helena Humphrey good to have have you with us in Ed Sheeran's
00:30:56Sheeran's first concert since his his opening act, Macklemore was dropped, dropped, Ed Sheeran