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Asilomar AI Principles

Published1 January 2017

Issued by Future of Life Institute.

Summary

The Asilomar AI Principles were an early cross-disciplinary framework for beneficial artificial intelligence. Developed through the Future of Life Institute, the principles were signed by more than 1,500 AI researchers and organised into research issues, ethics and values, and long-term issues. They addressed topics including safety, transparency, responsibility, human values, shared benefit, existential risk, and recursive self-improvement. The principles helped establish a vocabulary for later AI governance debates before binding national and regional AI laws emerged.

Why it matters

Twenty-three principles covering research priorities, ethics and values, safety, transparency, responsibility, human values, shared benefit, long-term risks, existential risk, and recursive self-improvement.

Governance themes

Topics

Record metadata

Country
Global
Region
Global
Organisation
Future of Life Institute
Governance themes
AI governance, Safety, Human rights, Accountability, Risk management
Document type
Framework
Status
Published
Publication date
1 January 2017
Last updated
29 June 2026
Language
English
Original source
View original source

Citation export

Plain citation

Future of Life Institute, Asilomar AI Principles, 2017.

BibTeX

@misc{asilomar_ai_principles_2017,
  title        = {Asilomar AI Principles},
  author       = {Future of Life Institute},
  year         = {2017},
  howpublished = {Global AI Governance Archive},
  url          = {https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/ai-principles/}
}

See the citation guide for style-specific examples.

Recorded cross-references

  • OECD Principles on Artificial Intelligence
  • UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI
  • Beijing AI Principles

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