International AI Safety Report

The First Independent International AI Safety Report was published on 29 January 2025.^[1] The report assesses a wide range of risks posed by general-purpose AI and how to mitigate against them.^[2][3][4] The report was commissioned by the 30 nations attending the 2023 AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom, in order to inform discussion at the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris, France.^[5][2] The report was published by a cohort of 96 artificial intelligence experts led by Canadian machine learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, often referred to as one of the "godfathers" of AI.^[4][2][6]

Capabilities of AI

In examining the what general-purpose AI can do, the report recognised that its capabilities have increased rapidly, and that the pace of further advancements may range from slow to extremely rapid.^[4][2] Policymakers thus face an "evidence dilemma": on the one hand, introducing mitigation measures before there is clear evidence or a risk could lead to ineffective or unnecessary mitigations. On the other hand, waiting until there is clear evidence could leave society unprepared or even make mitigation impossible.^[4]

AI risks

The report identified several concrete harms from AI, including the violation of privacy; the enablement of scams; malfunctions due to unreliable AI; and the creation of deepfakes with sexual content, which expose women and children in particular to potential violence and abuse.^[1][3][2] Other harms include malicious use of AI for cyber and biological attacks, and the risk of losing control of future AI systems.^[1]