Statement on AI Risk
Center for AI Safety · 30 May 2023
A single-sentence 2023 statement that AI extinction risk deserves the same priority as pandemics and nuclear war, signed by the heads of the top labs. It shifted public debate but committed the signers to nothing specific.
What it calls for
- International governance
- Alignment research
Scope
One sentence; 350+ initial signatories incl. Hinton, Bengio, Altman, Amodei, Hassabis; thousands since (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statement_on_AI_Risk)
What actually happened
The statement asks only that extinction risk be 'a global priority'. Signatory CEOs subsequently signed the White House voluntary commitments (July 2023) and Seoul commitments (May 2024), yet by 2025-26 OpenAI loosened its Preparedness Framework and Anthropic dropped its pause language in RSP v3 (https://www.governance.ai/analysis/anthropics-rsp-v3-0-how-it-works-whats-changed-and-some-reflections). CAIS's Action Fund co-sponsored California SB 1047 (vetoed 2024) and supported SB 53 (signed 2025) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_AI_Safety). Looked for: measurable prioritisation by signatory governments - the UK/US AI safety institutes (Nov 2023) are the clearest downstream action.