AI Safety is Stuck in Technical Terms -- A System Safety Response to the International AI Safety Report
This addresses the gap in AI safety discourse for policymakers and researchers by advocating a shift from purely technical to holistic system safety approaches.
The paper critiques the International AI Safety Report for its narrow technical focus on AI safety, arguing that it overlooks sociotechnical factors and hinders effective policy. It proposes adopting system safety principles to integrate non-technical aspects and improve governance frameworks like the European AI Act.
Safety has become the central value around which dominant AI governance efforts are being shaped. Recently, this culminated in the publication of the International AI Safety Report, written by 96 experts of which 30 nominated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Union (EU), and the United Nations (UN). The report focuses on the safety risks of general-purpose AI and available technical mitigation approaches. In this response, informed by a system safety perspective, I refl ect on the key conclusions of the report, identifying fundamental issues in the currently dominant technical framing of AI safety and how this frustrates meaningful discourse and policy efforts to address safety comprehensively. The system safety discipline has dealt with the safety risks of software-based systems for many decades, and understands safety risks in AI systems as sociotechnical and requiring consideration of technical and non-technical factors and their interactions. The International AI Safety report does identify the need for system safety approaches. Lessons, concepts and methods from system safety indeed provide an important blueprint for overcoming current shortcomings in technical approaches by integrating rather than adding on non-technical factors and interventions. I conclude with why building a system safety discipline can help us overcome limitations in the European AI Act, as well as how the discipline can help shape sustainable investments into Public Interest AI.