The Netherlands and the US are among 60 countries which signed a commitment to the responsible use of AI, during a conference in The Hague on Thursday.

The statement was presented during the REAIM 2023 conference, which brought together governments and interest groups to discuss the ethical uses of artificial intelligence.

‘We are in time to keep AI from spiraling out of control,’ foreign affairs minister Wopke Hoekstra said during the closing programme.

Countries signing the call to action pledge to take ‘appropriate safeguards and human oversight of the use of AI systems’ and ‘to work together, share knowledge by exchanging good practices and lessons learnt.’

The conference, held over two days at the World Forum in The Hague, was the result of a 2021 motion in the Dutch parliament calling on the government to work on a treaty regulating the use of autonomous weapons.

In all, some 50 countries and 2,000 people were in attendance and the event was co-sponsored by South Korea.

Amnesty International called on attendees to sign a petition banning killer robots while companies gave a demonstration of the advancement of robot dogs.

‘This is, after all, the city of peace and justice,’ Hoekstra told reporters at a briefing ahead of the conference when asked why the Netherlands was hosting the first gathering of its type.