The United States-based OpenAI has called for the United States to lead an international effort to set shared technical standards for the most advanced AI systems, including for so-called recursive self-improvement.
In its “Building standards for the next phase of AI” statement late on Monday, OpenAi said that coordinated rules are needed to manage safety risks as AI takes on more of its own development.
OpenAi stressed that recursive self-improvement is a process of AI systems increasingly conducting the research to build later generations of AI. This shift can accelerate progress rapidly.
Fully autonomous self-improvement is not happening now and should not be pursued unless it can be done safely, OpenAI said. It warned that proceeding without sufficient caution could leave people unable to oversee systems they no longer understand.
The company set out two elements. The first is a mechanism linking the growing network of national AI safety institutes, such as those in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, Singapore, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. They should coordinate through the U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation and national industry groups.
Such standards, OpenAI said, would be voluntary technical benchmarks rather than licenses or mandatory pre-release review, with each government deciding whether to write them into its own law.
The second is a set of common measurement and incident-reporting protocols, covering the evaluation of self-improvement-related progress, the amount of autonomous research inside AI companies, thresholds for triggering human review, and shared systems for classifying and reporting alignment incidents.
OpenAI also called for secure communication channels among governments and critical-infrastructure operators to share threats and vulnerabilities.
The company said dialogue between the United States and China on such measures would be a positive step and that unspecified upcoming talks were well timed.
It also pointed out that the United States is best placed to lead, citing its standing at the technical frontier and in global finance, trade, defense, and information networks.
China emphasizes equally on AI development-security, backs UN-led governance: Foreign Ministry