When Rishi met Elon: five things we learned from AI summit

The UK's AI safety summit at Bletchley Park has drawn to a close, with nations signing an international declaration to address risks with the rapidly developing technology. 

On the first of the two days, 28 governments, including the UK, US, EU, Australia and China, signed the Bletchley declaration, acknowledging the potentially catastrophic risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI).

On day two, Rishi Sunak unveiled a "landmark" agreement for testing AI models, in which "like-minded governments" can now assess the AI models of eight leading tech companies before their release.

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The Week takes a look at five key takeaways from the event. 

The Sunak-Musk chat raised eyebrows

The summit was brought to a close with an unprecedented 40-minute one-on-one interview at Lancaster House on The Mall in central London, in which Sunak asked tech billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk about his views on the future of AI. 

This set-up raised more than a few eyebrows among British journalists. The Guardian described Sunak's demeanour as that of an "eager chatshow host" who was quick to flatter the world's richest man. "You are known for being such a brilliant innovator and technologist," Sunak told Musk at one point during the interview.

Sky News' deputy political editor Sam Coates described the talk as "one of the maddest events I've ever covered", with "40 minutes of softball questions" and "jovial witticisms" from Sunak. 

And The Times' Matt Chorley pondered in a column: "why is the actual prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland sitting here like Gloria Hunniford, hanging on every word of this guy who bought Twitter and drove it towards the ground faster than one of his early rockets?"

AI could eliminate jobs in the future

AI will be "the most disruptive force in history" in terms of jobs, Musk warned Sunak.

"There will come a point where no job is needed – you can have a job if you want to for personal satisfaction," he said. One of the challenges of the future, he added, will be how to find meaning in life in a world where jobs are unnecessary. 

Earlier in the conference Sunak had sought to assuage fears over AI's threat to jobs, saying technology should be seen as a "co-pilot" rather than "something that necessarily is going to replace someone’s job".

Responding to Musk's vision of a work-less future, Sunak replied: "I'm someone who believes work gives you meaning."

Fears over 'Terminator-style' robots

One of the more alarming topics of discussion was the scale of the threat AI could pose to humanity. 

On the second day of the summit, Sunak said that AI technology could pose a risk "on a scale like pandemics and nuclear war". That was why global leaders had "a responsibility to act to take the steps to protect people".

During his interview with Sunak, Musk said that "we should be quite concerned" about Terminator-style humanoid robots that "can follow you anywhere".

"If a robot can follow you anywhere, what if they get a software update one day, and they're not so friendly any more?" said Musk, stressing the importance of a physical off-switch for such inventions.

A bemused Sunak replied: "You're not selling this."

Sunak's Silicon Valley vision for Britain

During his talk with Musk, Sunak said he wanted to "transpose" the entrepreneurial culture of "places like Silicon Valley", where, according to Sunak, people "are unafraid to give up the security of a regular pay cheque to go and start something and be comfortable with failure".

The comment was branded "out of touch" by Labour front-bencher Jonathan Ashworth, who wrote on the Musk-owned social media platform X: “After 13 years of the Tories, the public are enduring the worst cost-of-living crisis in memory and he is spending his time telling Elon Musk that he wishes they would give up their jobs and be ready to fail. He hasn't got a clue."

… but the summit was a 'diplomatic coup'

Prominent figures, including US Vice President Kamala Harris and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, as well as Wu Zhaohui, China's vice minister of science, attended the summit.

"The fact that the prime minister was able to get both China and the U.S. to share a stage and co-sign a statement on frontier AI risks is a major achievement in itself. Both the geopolitics and domestic politics here are so fraught, and it took real creativity and legwork to make this happen," Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Politico.

More than 25 countries and the EU signed the Bletchley declaration, which recognised the need to recognise the risks involved in AI development. France will host the next AI safety summit next year, "guaranteeing that Sunak's initiative will live on", said The Guardian.