‘Take Science Fiction Seriously’: World Leaders Sound Alarm on AI

BLETCHLEY, United Kingdom—Here in the English countryside, at an estate where World War II codebreakers cracked the Nazis’ Enigma encryption machine, world leaders pledged to work together to lessen risks of a technology they said also poses a grave threat.

Artificial intelligence, they said, could in its most advanced forms create catastrophic risks in realms including cybersecurity and biotechnology—or even escape human control.