The AI safety summit, spanning two days from Nov. 1 to 2, is being held at Bletchley Park, the 55-mile-north London archaeological site. Government delegates, business tycoons, and the CEOs of top AI firms, including U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and Elon Musk, will be present.
On Wednesday, the U.K. will launch its important AI summit, with leaders in politics and heads of leading AI companies attending to devise international accord on how to manage the safe and responsible creation of the advancing tech. Taking place at the historically significant Bletchley Park on November 1-2, the summit will involve representatives from nations around the world, such as the U.S. and China, both of which are making significant strides in crafting cutting-edge AI technologies. This is Prime Minister Sunak's opportunity to demonstrate the U.K.'s role in the worldwide dialogue regarding the governance of AI. Ever since OpenAI, endorsed by Microsoft, released its ChatGPT, the contest to control AI has grown even more aggressive.
Notables from the tech and political realms will be present at the summit. They include Tesla and xAI CEO Elon Musk, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, Microsoft President Brad Smith, Google Deepmind CEO Demis Hassabis, Meta AI chief Yann LeCun and President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Arm CEO Rene Haas, IBM Senior Vice President Dario Gil, Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustaffson, Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Samsung Chief Technology Officer Cheun Kyung-whoon, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, executives from South Korean electronics giant Sony, and representatives from Chinese technology giants Alibaba and Tencent. You can watch the main talks and speeches live online here. Musk arrived in the U.K. late Tuesday via his own private jet.
A number of leaders have chosen not to go to the summit and are dispatching representatives in their stead.
This list includes U.S. President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. When asked if Sunak experienced any exclusion from his foreign colleagues, a statement from his representative told media on Monday that "No, not at all."
The aim of the U.K. AI summit is to create an international framework for the ethical and responsible development of AI models, specifically relating to "frontier AI" models like those developed by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. It will tackle two potential risks associated with AI: misuse and the lack of control over the technology. Misuse could arise from a malicious actor using AI to create undetectable malware or to support state-sponsored bioweapons, while the loss of control refers to AI models that are not in alignment with human values and intentions.
Rishi Sunak is awkwardly trying to balance the line between getting significant tech industry investment into the U.K. and reassuring civil society groups that he is conscious of the potential for AI to displace or weaken human capability. Prior to the summit, over a hundred firms and organizations, like the Trades Union Congress, Connected by Data and Open Rights Group, released a joint letter to the Prime Minister noting that the occasion was a "closed door event," which was overrun by Big Tech and left small businesses and artists out of the picture. This is backed by results from a poll conducted by the Data and Marketing Association, which revealed that 43% of SMEs had no intentions to innovate with AI over the upcoming year due to safety considerations. Rachel Aldighieri, the managing director of the DMA, commented: “Real uptake and application of AI is still quite low among members of our association. Talking to large companies - banks and travel firms - we can even see that access to AI resources is still limited because they want to reduce risk.”
Comments