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Artificial intelligence systems are permeating into everyday life faster than ever before.

"The AI systems that are currently being developed and the ones that have been released recently represent a type of technology that is intrinsically very difficult to understand and very difficult to guarantee that its going to behave in a safe way," Stuart Russell says.

That's why thousands of researchers who develop AI recently wrote an open letter pleading for help regulating the very technology they're creating.

Today, On Point: Can AI be regulated?

Stuart Russell, professor of computer science at University of California at Berkeley. His textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach is the leading AI textbook around the world. He co-signed the Future of Life Institute letter titled Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter."

Peter Stone, professor of computer science and director of robotics at the University of Texas at Austin. Executive director of Sony AI America. Hes the standing committee chair of the 100 year study on AI. He co-signed the Future of Life Institute letter titled Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter."

Louis Rosenberg, CEO and Chief Scientist of Unanimous AI.

Laura Grego, senior scientist and the research director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: The atomic bomb. First detonated at the Trinity Test site in New Mexico, on July 16, 1954.

Less than a month after the Trinity test, President Harry Truman authorized the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

More than 200,000 people were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Cold War and threats of mutually assured destruction soon followed.

Though atomic weapons were developed in wartime the technologys developers were not in lockstep about its use.

Two months before the U.S. bombed Japan, and a month before the Trinity test, an influential group of scientists wrote a letter to Truman, warning the president of what the country was creating.

LAURA GREGO: The Franck report was one instance of a semi-regular drumbeat by nuclear scientists to try to raise visibility about the dangers of these weapons.

CHAKRABARTI: Laura Grego is senior scientist and research director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. The Franck report named after James Franck, the Nobel prize-winning scientist who chaired the committee that wrote it, was sent to President Truman in June of 1945.

GREGO: The Franck report came out of the group at University of Chicago whose technical job in the Manhattan Project was to develop the methods to produce plutonium for the American bombs. In 1945, they'd completed a lot of that work. In other parts of the Manhattan Project, they were still really busy completing the bomb work.

But a lot of that had been done and they had some time to sit back and consider the effects of the technology that they had produced. And a group of seven really eminent physicists and I think one was a biologist and one was chemist sat and thought through these ideas, and they produced this report called the Frank Report, which was warning that if the United States use the bomb on Japan, it would unleash a set of results that would be really bad.

The Franck report noted that by the summer of 1945, the war in Europe had ended. That changed the stakes, they believed, writing:

If the United States were to be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, she would sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race for armaments and prejudice the possibility of reaching an international agreement on the future control of such weapons.

CHAKRABARTI: In fact, even J. Robert Oppenheimer noted in 1945.

J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER: There seem to be two great views among scientists and no doubt would be among others if people knew about it. On the one hand, they hoped that this instrument would never be used in war, and therefore they hope that we would not start out by using it. On the other hand, and on the whole, we were inclined to think that if it was needed to put an end to the war and had a chance of so doing, we thought that was the right thing to do.

Laura Grego says the Franck report urged even more action:

We therefore feel it is our duty to urge that the political problems, arising from the mastering of nuclear power, be recognized in all their gravity, and that appropriate steps be taken for their study and the preparation of necessary decisions.

GREGO: We ended up at one point during the Cold War with more than 60,000 weapons, each of which were much larger than what were used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even today, the U.S. is prepared to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to modernize and upgrade its nuclear arsenal.

In 20 years, we'll have 100 years of the atomic bomb. And we're not close to controlling that. We are still organized around these technologies of mass destruction. So I do think have we been better able to control that right at the very beginning of the technology, we would be in such a better place today.

The Guardian: "AI has much to offer humanity. It could also wreak terrible harm. It must be controlled" "In case you have been somewhere else in the solar system, here is a brief AI news update. My apologies if it sounds like the opening paragraph of a bad science fiction novel."

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Can AI be regulated? | On Point - WBUR News