DUBLIN: From the spectre of refrigerator-infecting AI worms to warnings of `major` security incidents at the horizon, calls to prioritise safety in the development of artificial intelligence dominated an industry summit on Wednesday.

Concerns about AI guardrails have soared after models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic were involved in security incidents during testing, piling on pressure to regulate the technology. Google DeepMind chair Demis Hassabis warned AI capabilities were growing fast, telling the conference in Dublin such instances were `early warning shots` fired by systems that `aren`t that powerful yet`.

`So the incidents aren`t that major,` he said. `But they could be, looking into next year and the next couple of years, if we don`t do more work as an industry and individually as companies and governments on securing these systems,` Hassabis warned.New AI models should likely first be tested in offline `sandboxes`, after other companies` models escaped the closed environments used to assess their capabilities, he added.

Milk and worms Microsoft president Brad Smith called for regulation saying industry and governments must `act with urgency` to create `real and effective safety standards` to contain the risks linked to artificial intelligence.

`There are more safety rules for a carton of milk than for AI. There are more safety rules for your oven than for AI,` he told the conference.

`We need to recognise that the power of AI has moved faster than the safety for it. Safety needs to catch up. And we`re going to need some new AI safety laws and rules.` AI agents should be equipped with `safety brakes` that users could activate in the event of an incident and AI providers should face mandatory incident-reporting obligations, he said.

As tech companies race to build ever more powerful AI directly into phones, laptops, cars and household devices rather than running it in distant data centres, Anthropic said such AI might eventually autonomously hop from device to device.-AFP