Google DeepMind’s Ayoub says companies can fence AI in, like banks did

Companies cannot fully govern AI systems, but they can build a fixed fence around them, Google DeepMind’s Kareem Ayoub said. He pointed to banks in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They put trading algorithms inside fixed rules they could check.

Ayoub, DeepMind’s vice president of AI technical strategy, spoke to Bloomberg’s Tom Mackenzie on Wednesday at HumanX in Amsterdam. He said the safety debate comes down to a tension between exponential capability and linear governance.

“You may not be able to fully govern the system itself, but you can build a deterministic governance perimeter around it,” Ayoub said of the banks’ approach.

He split the problem into three parts. One is the role AI should play in research and development. Another is how transparent systems must be. The third is who controls them. Google’s Frontier Safety Framework, which sets capability thresholds and mitigations, is part of the answer, he said.

Mackenzie noted that…