Several members of the European Union parliament released an open letter calling on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US President Joe Biden to convene a high-level global summit on artificial intelligence. The aim of the summit would be to agree on a preliminary set of governing principles for the development, control and deployment of AI.

Recent developments in AI prompted the letter. It also referred to another recent open letter by the Future Life Institute that called for a six-month moratorium on the development of power AI.

The members of Parliament’s letter said, “We share some of the concerns expressed in the [Future Life Institute] letter, even while we disagree with some of its more alarmist statements.”

“AI is moving very fast, and we need to move too,” Dragos Tudorache, a member of Parliament from Romania and signatory to the letter, said in a tweet. “The call from the Future of Life Institute to pause the development of very powerful AI for half a year, although unnecessarily alarmist, is another signal we need to focus serious political attention on this issue.”

The European Union is already looking at AI with its Artificial Intelligence Act. Separately, the European Data Protection Board last week created a task force on generative AI chatbot ChatGPT. Use of artificial intelligence has caused some concern in recruiting and whether it will be fair. Last month, the World Employment Confederation adopted ethical principles for its members to abide by when deploying AI technology.