Statement on Superintelligence
Future of Life Institute · 22 October 2025
A 2025 statement, signed by AI pioneers and public figures across the political spectrum, calling for a ban on building superintelligence until it is proven safe and the public agrees. No country has acted on it, and labs continue the race.
What it calls for
- Pause/moratorium
- International governance
- Safety evaluations
Scope
~800 at launch (Hinton, Bengio, Wozniak, Branson, Bannon, Prince Harry); 70,000+ public signatures by Sept 2026 per the site
What actually happened
Calls for a prohibition on developing superintelligence until there is scientific consensus on safety and public buy-in (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/22/800-petition-signatures-apple-steve-wozniak-and-virgin-richard-branson-superintelligence-race.html). No government has adopted a prohibition; the UK House of Lords debated superintelligence in Jan 2026 (https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2026-01-29/debates/848C6617-4CB6-463C-9957-82C53ACA2858/SuperintelligentAI) and 100+ UK parliamentarians signed ControlAI's statement for binding regulation (https://controlai.news/p/100-uk-parliamentarians-acknowledge). Frontier labs (Meta Superintelligence Labs, OpenAI, Anthropic) continued to pursue the goal explicitly.