In a significant move to address the challenges and opportunities presented by the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the UK government has announced that it will host the first major global summit on AI safety. The announcement was made in a press release from the Prime Minister’s Office (10 Downing Street).
The summit, scheduled for this autumn, aims to bring together key countries, leading tech companies, and researchers to discuss and agree on safety measures to evaluate and monitor the most significant risks from AI. The initiative comes in response to recent warnings from leading experts about the potential for AI to endanger humanity in similar ways to pandemics or nuclear weapons.
The Prime Minister emphasized the importance of international collaboration in ensuring AI’s safe and reliable development and use. He stated that AI has incredible potential to transform lives for the better, but it needs to be developed and used in a safe and secure way. He added that no one country can do this alone and that the UK, with its vast expertise and commitment to an open, democratic international system, will stand together with its allies to lead the way.
The press added that the UK is well-positioned to lead these discussions, being a world leader in AI and ranking third behind the US and China. The UK’s AI sector already contributes £3.7 billion to the UK economy and employs 50,000 people across the country.
In addition to the summit, the UK has launched an expert taskforce to help build and adopt the next generation of safe AI, backed by £100 million of funding, alongside a commitment to spend £900 million developing compute capacity, including an exascale supercomputer in the UK.
The press release also highlighted global companies’ recent expansion of AI work in the UK. Last month, OpenAI and Anthropic opened offices in London, and US tech giant Palantir announced it would make the UK its new European HQ for AI development.
AI could transform our lives for the better if used safely and securely.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) June 8, 2023
No one country can do this alone – it'll take a global effort.
But with our expertise and commitment to an open, democratic international system, the UK will stand together with our allies to lead the way.
Featured Image Credit: Photo by “Rui Chamberlain” via Unsplash
