South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday called for BRICS to establish an international mechanism for the independent scientific evaluation of artificial intelligence, warning that technological capabilities must not advance beyond humanity's ability to understand and control them.
Speaking at the BRICS summit in New Delhi, Ramaphosa said AI could usher in a new era of productivity and human progress, but warned of risks associated with increasingly powerful systems.
"The capabilities of artificial intelligence models are becoming increasingly more powerful and are rapidly reshaping almost every area of economic and social life," he said.
If used "effectively and responsibly," AI could help reduce inequality, poverty, and underdevelopment, and transform medicine, education, scientific discovery, and agricultural productivity, he added.
Risks
Ramaphosa, however, said governments should pay close attention to warnings coming from those developing the world's most powerful AI systems.
He cited risks, including advanced cyber operations, assistance in biological weapons development, autonomous action, manipulation, mass surveillance, and disruption of employment, as well as the possibility of systems whose capabilities become difficult for humans to control.
"We should therefore neither fear AI nor approach it recklessly," Ramaphosa said. "Our responsibility is to ensure that human governance advances as rapidly as artificial intelligence itself."
The South African president specifically backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's calls for greater external oversight of AI developers.
Human control
"We agree with those in the industry, in the AI industry, that is, such as Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, who are arguing that AI companies should be subject to formal external checks, to audits and to government authority," he said.
Ramaphosa said such oversight is already standard practice in industries whose activities have significant implications for human safety and well-being, citing aviation, pharmaceuticals, nuclear power, and financial institutions.
"We must never reach a situation where technological capability has moved beyond our capacity to understand it, supervise it and control it," he said.
Ramaphosa proposed that BRICS establish an international mechanism for the independent scientific evaluation of AI, backed by "meaningful human control principles" and mandatory reporting of serious incidents.
Safeguards
He also called for progressively stronger safeguards as AI capabilities increase, alongside investment in sovereign AI capacity for developing economies.
Ramaphosa welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping's proposal to establish an AI ecosystem for BRICS, saying South Africa supports the initiative.
