Ursula von der Leyen urged to retract AI comments on superintelligence

A civil liberties group has accused EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen of making comments about artificial intelligence based on the marketing speeches of technology companies.

In a letter to Ms von der Leyen on Monday, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) asked her to retract a statement she recently made about AI superintelligence, and urged her to “diligently evaluate other such marketing claims about AI”.

AI superintelligence is technology's hypothetical ability to perform highly advanced cognitive functions and develop reasoning skills that would surpass those of humans.

The Ireland-based civil liberties group said Ms von der Leyen relied on statements made by Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, Nvidia's Jensen Huang and OpenAI boss Sam Altman as the basis for her statement about AI nearing human reasoning, calling the statements to be motivated purely by profit instead of empirical evidence.

The group added that by Ms von der Leyen relying on Big Tech marketing material, she was close to enabling “a significant speculative bubble to which baseless AI hype is contributing.”

ICCL's letter further accused the European Commission of relying on technology executives in a way that potentially “undermines the ability” of the governing body to adequately regulate AI companies and the many services they offer.

The letter referred to a speech by Ms von der Leyen at an EU budget conference in May, when she touched on AI.

“When the current budget was negotiated, we thought AI would only approach human reasoning around 2050, now we expect this to happen already next year,” she said.

Through a freedom of information request made by ICCL, the European Commission eventually provided the sources and quotes that in turn, motivated that particular line about human reasoning and AI in Ms von der Leyen’s speech.

It should be noted Ms von der Leyen has pushed for precautions in AI development.

In 2023, she called on Big Tech and AI start-ups to enact a code of conduct “as soon as possible”.

In October, the UK's Prince Harry, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and conservative activist Steve Bannon were among hundreds of prominent individuals who signed a petition calling for the prohibition of the development of AI superintelligence.

Geoffrey Hinton, widely considered to be the “godfather of AI”, also signed the petition, which calls for a ban on the “reckless development of superintelligence”.

The petition was organised by the Future of Life Institute, which describes itself as trying to steer “transformative technology towards benefiting life and away from extreme large-scale risks”.

In recent months, however, groups like the ICCL have accused technology executives of promoting a fear narrative to pit countries against one another, often depicting an AI race where governments could ensure dominance through investment.

“These tech CEOs claims concerning ‘superintelligence’ and ‘AGI’ are manifestly bound with their financial imperatives and not rigorous science,” ICCL wrote in its letter to the EC.