The Asilomar Conference on Beneficial AI took place from January 5 to the 8th of January 2017. The Future of Life Institute convened this meeting at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in California.
The Future of Life Institute organized the event with a specific purpose to address how artificial intelligence could be developed safely. More than one hundred thought leaders and researchers gathered to create a framework that would guide future research before risks became unmanageable.
Attendees collaborated to draft twenty-three specific guidelines intended to ensure beneficial artificial intelligence development. The resulting document outlined principles regarding transparency and accountability in algorithmic design while serving as a voluntary code of conduct for the industry.
An open letter containing the principles attracted signatures from nearly two thousand researchers and thousands of supporters worldwide. The document received 1797 signatures from AI-robotics experts specifically, and an additional 3923 people signed the letter as general supporters.
High-profile figures including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking publicly endorsed the resulting framework alongside other signatories like Anthony D. Romero and Demis Hassabis. AI researchers Ilya Sutskever, Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, and Stuart Russell all participated along with philosophers Sam Harris and Will MacAskill.