Tech Heavyweights Promise AI Security, Including a ‘Kill Switch’

World governments and major technology companies made a series of pledges on Tuesday at a summit in Seoul, South Korea, focused on artificial intelligence, pledging investment in research, testing and security.

Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Samsung were among the companies that made voluntary, non-binding commitments to remove AI from work in bioweapons, disinformation or automated cyberattacks, according to statements from the summit and reports from Reuters and AP. The companies also agreed to build a “kill switch” into their AIs, effectively allowing them to shut down their systems in the event of a disaster.

“We cannot sleepwalk into a dystopian future where the power of AI is controlled by a few,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “How we act now will define our era.”

The pledges made by governments and major tech companies mark the latest in a series of efforts to build regulations and guardrails as the use of AI continues to grow. In the year and a half since OpenAI released its generative AI chatbot ChatGPT, companies have flocked to the technology to help with automation and communication. Companies are using AI to help monitor infrastructure security, identify cancer in patient scans, and tutor children in their math homework. (For CNET’s hands-on reviews of AI-generating products including Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Copilot, along with AI news, tips, and explainers, see our AI Atlas resource page.)

Read more: AI Atlas, Your Guide to Today’s Artificial Intelligence

The Seoul summit took place as Microsoft, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, was unveiling its latest AI tools at its Build conference for developers and engineers, and a week after Google’s I/O developer conference, where the giant of research presented the advances in Gemini AI Systems and also noted its AI security efforts.

But AI experts are also raising alarms that despite promises of safety, AI development has extreme risks.

“Society’s response, despite promising first steps, is inadequate to the prospect of rapid, transformative progress expected by many experts,” a group of 15 experts, including AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, wrote in the journal Science at the beginning of this week. “There is a responsible way – if we have the wisdom to take it.”

Tuesday’s agreement between governments and major AI companies follows a series of earlier commitments made by the companies last November, when delegates from 28 countries agreed to contain potential “catastrophic risks” from AI, including through legislation.

Correction, May 22: This story originally misstated the location of this week’s AI summit. The event took place in Seoul, South Korea.

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