AI safety for everyone

Balint Gyevnar, Atoosa Kasirzadeh

Abstract: Recent discussions and research in artificial intelligence (AI) safety have increasingly emphasized the deep connection between AI safety and existential risk from advanced AI systems, suggesting that work on AI safety necessarily entails serious consideration of potential existential threats. However, this framing has three potential drawbacks: it may exclude researchers and practitioners who are committed to AI safety but approach the field from different angles; it could lead the public to mistakenly view AI safety as focused solely on existential scenarios rather than addressing a wide spectrum of safety challenges; and it risks creating resistance to safety measures among those who disagree with predictions of existential AI risks. Here, through a systematic literature review of primarily peer-reviewed research, we find a vast array of concrete safety work that addresses immediate and practical concerns with current AI systems. This includes crucial areas such as adversarial robustness and interpretability, highlighting how AI safety research naturally extends existing technological and systems safety concerns and practices. Our findings suggest the need for an epistemically inclusive and pluralistic conception of AI safety that can accommodate the full range of safety considerations, motivations and perspectives that currently shape the field. A systematic review of peer-reviewed AI safety research reveals extensive work on practical and immediate concerns. The findings advocate for an inclusive approach to AI safety that embraces diverse motivations and perspectives.