Open Letter to the Prime Minister of [CountryName]

(Version of November 29th, 2024)

This Open Letter to the Prime Minister of [CountryName] to join the Coalition for a Baruch Plan for AI will be regularly updated and, starting in January 2025, periodically submitted to the Presidents of China and the US - and to their relevant special advisors and security agencies, their Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Missions to the UN in Geneva and New York - together with the latest version of our Case for a Coalition for a Baruch Plan for AI, and supporting country-specific documentation:

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[Place, Date]

Your Excellency Prime Minister of [ContryName],

In this letter, we call on your country, its security agencies and leading IT or AI firms to engage in a global treaty-making process and engineering effort for AI of radically unprecedented scope, urgency, and effectiveness - open to all states on equal terms.

AI's skyrocketing and unchecked advances and the accelerating winner-take-all AI arms race among superpowers pose immense and urgent risks for your country, and every country, to be (1) largely or entirely subjugated in your economy and sovereignty or (2) victim of immense safety arms deriving from accidents, misuse, AI-driven world conflicts, loss of control over AI and the probable resulting human extinction.

Most of our chances rest on the presidents of China and the US jumping-starting such a process. Due to their lack of leadership so far, you have a historic opportunity to join with a few other pioneering heads of state. Together, you can fill this fatal leadership gap, act as a bridge between them, leave a positive legacy greater than that of any other leader in the history of humanity, and gain massively in economic terms by being the early partner of a Global Public Benefit AI Lab.

As Coalition for a Baruch Plan for AI, a group of multidisciplinary experts from around the world, we urge you to sign this or a similar Memorandum of Understanding and encourage as many of your colleagues and heads of state to do the same:

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Memorandum of Understanding for a Global Safe and Inclusive Governance of AI and a Global Public Interest AI Lab

Humanity stands on the brink of an irreversible slide towards AIs capable of subjugating or annihilating humanity or enabling a state or a firm to do so.

Leading US and Chinese AI scientists warn that catastrophic safety risks could materialize "at any time" while an AI-driven concentration of power and wealth rapidly unfolds, accruing unaccountable power in the hands of a few.

Nearly all states stand completely powerless on their own. At the same time, each of the two AI superpowers is forced into a reckless, winner-take-all AI race to the brink, dragging along their leading firms and allies to prevent being subjugated by the other. 

We still have a chance to prevail in this greatest challenge humanity has ever faced and realize AI's astounding positive potential, but only through unprecedented global coordination.

We need to proceed with the utmost urgency and care in creating global organizations that reliably prevent AI's immense and urgent risks of loss of human control, the concentration of power in a single state, catastrophic misuse and accidents, or an AI-driven global conflict. 

The scope of the risks, the impossibility of only two or a handful of states ensuring AI safety bans globally on their own, and the utter failure of predominant treaty-making models require the adoption of a radical yet time-proven treaty-making method that is efficient, extremely high-bandwidth, time-bound by set dates, all track, at least sufficiently inclusive, impervious to veto deadlocks and delaying tactics, and extremely high-bandwidth of interactions. 

Commitments

In consideration of the above, [StateName] hereby commits to dedicate the highest communications and diplomatic effort, and financial resources to pursue the following:

  • (A) Foster an urgent temporary US-China treaty on AI to define and implement—with the utmost urgency—extreme, dual-use, temporary, stop-gap measures to protect against extreme AI Safety risks—even at the cost of a substantial, global, extended slowdown or even pause in AI capabilities advancement. 

  • (B) Advance, co-design, and enact with the utmost urgency a structured treaty-making process leading up to an open, global intergovernmental constituent assembly for AI, guided by these minimum terms:

    • 1) A minimum and maximum mandate for such an assembly is set to ensure that the resulting global organization is sufficient in scale, delegated functions, and resources to reliably manage the risks in the years and decades to come, inspired by the 1946 Baruch Plan, while maximizing an overall increase in states' and citizens' sovereignty, and private initiative.

    • 2) A set start and end date, ensuring at least 2 months of intense full-time on-site negotiations among thousands of highest-level political, diplomatic, and security officials. Adopt decreasing supermajority rules to ensure near unanimity is striven for, but no state has a veto, and timelines are stuck to. The start date will be set to 6 months after at least 60 states, accruing 50% of the world population and GDP, and three members of the UN Security Council will have joined.

    • 3) Rules for states’ vote weighting will be largely based on GDP and population,  in consideration of the fact that over 3 billion people are unconnected or illiterate, of the enormous asymmetries of power, wealth, AI safety expertise, and geopolitical realism.

    • 4) A Global Public Benefit AI Lab and ecosystem will be urgently created with cumulative investment costing at least several hundred billion dollars over three years to develop and jointly exploit the most advanced safe AI and enable states and firms a safe and profitable exit ramp from the ongoing reckless AI arms race. It will be democratically governed, largely decentralized, public-private, and open to all states. It'll be a consortium similar to a global AirBus for AI. It will be much better funded than any other AI Lab, primarily via sovereign funds, pre-commercial procurement contracts of participating states, and other international funding sources.

This commitment is conditional on when and if at least seven more states from at least three different continents sign it. Financial contributions will be in the order of 0.9% of GDP, in the form of investments by each participant state sovereign funds, of which roughly 0.15% will be dedicated to the treaty-making and governance mechanisms and 0.75% to the Lab.

In representation of [StateName]:

[Signature]
[Title]
[Date]

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For more information on the Coalition for a Baruch Plan for AI, please refer to our 2,000-word Executive Summary. A 60-page Case for a Coalition for a Baruch Plan for AI is also available on request.

Reach out at cbpai@trustlesscomputing.org