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In a new YouGov poll of the British public, 83% of people said that governments should require AI companies to prove their AI models are safe before releasing them.

Ahead of the UK AI Safety Summit, the results are a clear sign that the British public wants the government to regulate advanced AI.

The representative poll, commissioned by the AI Safety Communications Centre, also found that 46% of Brits want the UK government to do more to tackle the potential risks of artificial intelligence. Only 3% want the government to do less.

Meanwhile, 58% want governments to provide oversight of the development of smarter-than-human AI — the stated goal of leading AI companies like OpenAI and DeepMind.

As countries come together at the international safety summit, the public also called on all countries to work together on developing AI regulation — going as far as to encourage such cooperation even with countries that may be seen as hostile. 42% of respondents called for this cooperation; rising to 51% when excluding “don’t knows”. 32% said they’d prefer the UK only work with allies.

Commenting on the results, Shakeel Hashim, co-founder of the AI Safety Communications Centre, said: “The pace of AI development is accelerating, and so are the associated risks. The British public clearly want governments to step in to provide democratic oversight of AI companies.”

The results suggest that public opinion closely mirrors that of many AI experts. Last week, leading AI scientists Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Andrew Yao and Dawn Song, among others, called on governments to require AI companies to prove their models are safe before deployment. In a joint paper, they said “We urgently need national institutions and international governance to enforce standards” on advanced AI systems.

Information

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc.  Total sample size was 2,106 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 19th – 20th October 2023.  The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all UK adults (aged 18+). The full results can be found here.

About AISCC: The AI Safety Communications Centre is a project which aims to connect the media to AI safety experts, resources, and information.