The AI Safety Summit: UK's bid to help world avoid apocalypse
Rishi Sunak hopes to become key broker in AI regulation and governance, but may struggle to align US, Chinese and EU interests
The UK is preparing to host the world's first international artificial intelligence safety summit.
Industry news site Verdict said the "landmark" summit, bringing together tech leaders, business experts and politicians, follows concern from the UK government AI "could threaten global stability and undermine our values".
The topics to be discussed range from threats to elections to AI's impact on online safety and its role in equality. But the focus will predominantly be on national security including the risk of terrorist groups using generative AI tools to create new weapons.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
"This is really about safety," a British official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Politico.
Why the UK?
The two-day summit begins on 1 November at Bletchley Park, the Buckinghamshire country house which was once the top-secret headquarters of Second World War codebreakers.
In what the BBC described as a big "political win" for Downing Street, the summit was announced during a trip to the US by the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in June.
The UK has made claims to being a "significant actor in AI, and in global governance and regulation" wrote Olivia O'Sullivan, Chatham House's Director of UK in the World Programme. The summit is "an opportunity to make the case that its AI industry – even if not close to the size of the United States' or China's – is substantial enough to make Britain an influential force in global debates about how the technology should develop and be governed".
If the UK can help bring together global powers to manage the risks AI poses, it "can also claim to be playing a burden-sharing role on international problems of the type it has played in the past", she added.
Who is attending?
The summit will bring together around 100 high-level participants including "leading politicians as well as independent experts and senior execs from the tech giants, who are mainly US based", said the BBC. Leading academics will also be invited.
While the list of participants has yet to be released, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, and Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, will attend along with US Vice-President Kamala Harris, while a representative of the Chinese government has also been invited. Their attendance is seen as crucial to the legitimacy of the summit even if some experts and Conservative MPs have security concerns around China's involvement.
One leader expected to snub the summit, however, is German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which could spark concerns of a "domino effect" with other world leaders, such as the French President Emmanuel Macron, also unconfirmed, the BBC reported.
The broadcaster said it is thought Berlin wishes to "avoid any messy overlap with G7 efforts, after the group of leading democratic countries agreed to create an international code of conduct". However, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to attend even though the EU is aiming to finalise its own landmark AI act by the end of the year.
What do they hope to achieve?
At a domestic level, the UK is currently planning to fold AI regulation into existing regulatory bodies, but Politico has revealed Sunak will use the AI summit to gather "like-minded countries" and executives from the leading AI companies to set out a roadmap for an AI Safety Institute.
This international body would "assist governments in evaluating national security risks associated with frontier models, which are the most advanced forms of the technology", said the news site.
The UK may be hoping to act a broker between the US, China and EU, but its global governance efforts will face the "significant challenge of bringing both non-state actors such as private companies on board, and non-allied states – particularly China – with few incentives to be transparent about the development of their AI systems", said O'Sullivan.
Positioning the UK as a key player and the face of global AI regulation also carries significant risks for the prime minister.
"Team Sunak hopes the AI summit is received as a heroic effort to protect the public," wrote Andrew Orlowski in The Telegraph. "But it may have the opposite effect."
"The biggest threat that technology companies fear is being held responsible for the consequences of their work," he said, and the summit may be viewed as an "attempt to prevent digital polluters from feeling the consequences of their actions".
"That's something the public, which must deal with the poisoned digital realm, is unlikely to forgive."
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Why Māori are protesting in New Zealand
A controversial bill has ignited a 'flashpoint in race relations' as opponents claim it will undermine the rights of Indigenous people
By Richard Windsor, The Week UK Published
-
Crossword: November 21, 2024
The Week's daily crossword
By The Week Staff Published
-
Sudoku hard: November 21, 2024
The Week's daily hard sudoku puzzle
By The Week Staff Published
-
What Trump's win could mean for Big Tech
Talking Points The tech industry is bracing itself for Trump's second administration
By Theara Coleman, The Week US Published
-
Google Maps gets an AI upgrade to compete with Apple
Under the Radar The Google-owned Waze, a navigation app, will be getting similar upgrades
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
Is ChatGPT's new search engine OpenAI's Google 'killer'?
Talking Point There's a new AI-backed search engine in town. But can it stand up to Google's decades-long hold on internet searches?
By Theara Coleman, The Week US Published
-
Teen suicide puts AI chatbots in the hot seat
In the spotlight A Florida mom has targeted custom AI chatbot platform Character.AI and Google in a lawsuit over her son's death
By Theara Coleman, The Week US Published
-
'Stunningly lifelike' AI podcasts are here
Under the Radar Users are amazed – and creators unnerved – by Google tool that generates human conversation from text in moments
By Abby Wilson Published
-
OpenAI eyes path to 'for-profit' status as more executives flee
In the spotlight The tension between creating technology for humanity's sake and collecting a profit is coming to a head for the creator of ChatGPT
By Theara Coleman, The Week US Published
-
Microsoft's Three Mile Island deal: How Big Tech is snatching up nuclear power
In the spotlight The company paid for access to all the power made by the previously defunct nuclear plant
By Theara Coleman, The Week US Published
-
How will the introduction of AI change Apple's iPhone?
Today's Big Question 'Apple Intelligence' is set to be introduced on the iPhone 16 as part of iOS 18
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published