José Jaime Villalobos (Institute for Law & AI), Matthijs M. Maas (Institute for Law & AI), and Christoph Winter (University of Cambridge Faculty of Law) have posted Introduction: Global Catastrophic Risk, Advanced AI, and International Law on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
International law has long been driven by the imperative to prevent mass harm to humanity. In a new era of global catastrophic risks, including from novel sources such as advanced artificial intelligence, it can and must continue to serve as a cornerstone for mitigating these epochal threats to human rights, safety, and welfare. This Introduction establishes the book’s core argument: that States are already legally obligated under international law to mitigate all global catastrophic risks. These obligations can be drawn from treaties and customary international law, from risk-specific regimes that target particular global hazards as well as cross-cutting regimes protecting humans or their environment. These obligations can be interpreted and applied to the mitigation of catastrophic risks from advanced AI through systemic integration, drawing on general principles of law derived from the international legal system. This introduction clarifies the doctrinal and political foundations of this argument, articulates its limits, and compares it to other strategies for mitigating global catastrophic risks.
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