Topline
Global leaders from government, tech, civil society and academia will gather in Britain on Wednesday and Thursday for a landmark summit on artificial intelligence, amid growing concern over the safety of the fast-moving technology as it rapidly outpaces efforts to regulate it.
Key Facts
Billionaire Elon Musk is expected to attend the two-day summit and will host a live conversation with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on his platform X once it has finished on Thursday, Sunak confirmed on Monday.
Musk will be joining leaders from some of the world’s top AI companies and confirmed guests reportedly include Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind, Sam Altman, who heads up ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Dario Amodei, chief executive and co-founder of Anthropic, as well as Palantir’s Alex Karp, Cohere’s Aidan Gomez and Stability AI’s Emad Mostaque.
Other tech titans are also expected to be well represented, with Microsoft sending its policy chief Brad Smith, Google its technology and society lead James Manyika and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta both its AI and policy heads Yann LeCun—considered one of three “godfathers” of modern AI—and Nick Clegg, who is also a former U.K. deputy prime minister.
Among experts reported to be attending are respected academics like Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio—who round out the trifecta of modern AI “godfathers” and warned AI could drive humans to extinction—and Stuart Russell and representatives from groups studying AI risk like the Future of Life Institute and Alan Turing Institute.
Relatively few of the government heads Sunak invited are reported to be taking up his offer—Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are notable exceptions (as was Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu) and UN chief Antonio Guterres is also expected to attend—but are sending delegates, with China, Canada, France and Germany all reported to be sending officials of varying seniority.
Vice President Kamala Harris will be representing the United States at the summit and will be delivering a “major policy speech” in London on Wednesday outlining the administration’s “vision for the future of AI.”
What We Don’t Know
Organizers have suggested the event will host around 100 people, though the full guest list has not been made public and many of the invitees have been determined through statements that they plan on attending. The full list of attendees will become apparent as the summit proceeds. The summit is located in Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes, where Britain’s codebreakers including AI pioneer Alan Turing helped crack Nazi codes. Police have implemented airspace restrictions above the venue with the expectation of “dignitaries and leaders from around the world” visiting, Thames Valley Police said.
What To Watch For
Sunak has said he hopes the summit will ignite a global conversation on the future of AI and how to regulate it. The summit agenda details a series of roundtable discussions focused on the threats posed by specific areas of AI, such as how it may be misused, create risks to biosecurity and cybersecurity, how it will be integrated into society and what would happen if we were to lose control of AI. The focus appears largely geared towards the more apocalyptic, existential risks of AI rather than risks that are already happening today. Sunak reportedly hopes this will be the first of a regular series of AI summits in the vein of G7 and G20 meetings and British officials hope they may be able to secure policy commitments to mitigate AI risk or signatures on a joint statement proclaiming the need for action.
Tangent
Amid a disappointing turnout among world leaders, Downing Street has insisted the event is not being snubbed and said it is pleased with the responses it has received. The decision to invite China—which has reportedly been extended to President Xi Jinping himself—has proven particularly controversial among Sunak’s Conservative lawmakers, who argue Beijing misuses the technology. China is one of the undisputed leaders in the field of AI and Downing Street rebuffed critics and insisted it is right for China to be invited to a global summit on AI governance.
Can Rishi Sunak’s big summit save us from AI nightmare? (BBC)
White House Unveils ‘Sweeping’ AI Strategy As Biden Pushes For Transparency And Safety (Forbes)
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