Hundreds of public figures, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Virgin's Richard Branson urge AI ‘superintelligence’ ban (www.cnbc.com)

More than 800 prominent figures — ranging from Apple co‑founder Steve Wozniak and AI pioneers Yoshua Bengio, Geoff Hinton and Stuart Russell, to public figures like Richard Branson and former national security adviser Susan Rice — published a statement calling for a prohibition or pause on the development of “superintelligence,” defined as AI that would surpass human intellect. The signatories, a broad coalition of academics, technologists, politicians, religious leaders and media personalities, say the rapid race by companies such as OpenAI, xAI and Meta (whose division even uses “Superintelligence” in its name) raises grave concerns about economic disruption, loss of freedoms, national security risks and even existential threats. The demand is significant for the AI/ML community because it pushes safety and governance from academic debate into potential policy and public scrutiny: signers want a halt until strong public buy‑in and a broad scientific consensus that superintelligence can be built safely and controllably. Technically, that points to urgent needs in alignment research (robust reward specification, interpretability, verification), standards for capability testing and external audits, and mechanisms to control emergent behaviors in advanced large language models. If taken up by regulators or funders, the call could slow capability development, redirect resources toward rigorous safety work, and reshape collaboration between industry, academia and governments.