PARIS, France (AFP) — More than 700 scientists, political figures and celebrities including Prince Harry, Richard Branson and Steve Bannon on Wednesday called for an end to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) capable of outsmarting humans.

“The initiative calls for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence until the technology is reliably safe and controllable, and has public buy-in,” according to an open letter published by the Future of Life Institute, a United States-based non-government organization that campaigns against the dangers of AI.

Signatories include the “Godfather of AI” and 2024 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics Geoffrey Hinton; Computer Sciences professor at the University of California in Berkeley Stuart Russell; and the world’s most-cited AI scientist Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal.

Other public figures have signed: Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, US President Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon, and former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice. The initiative is also endorsed by the Vatican’s AI expert Paolo Benanti and celebrities such as Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, and the US singer will.i.am.

Most major AI developers are striving for artificial general intelligence, a stage where AI would match all human intellectual capabilities, and even superintelligence, which would exceed them.

Speaking at an event organized by the media group Axel Springer in September, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose company created ChatGPT, said that superintelligence could be achieved within the next five years.