Leaders from around the world are in the UK for the AI Summit.
The vice president Harris, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, and other high-ranking officials are traveling to Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom while prime minister Rishi Sunak cautions that artificial intelligence (AI) may pose grave threats to humankind.
Policymakers were in a panic after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak first revealed intentions to host a global summit on artificial intelligence in June.
In a single letter, hundreds of academics and industry executives urged regulators to acknowledge “the risk of extermination from AI” as a concern on par with a pandemic or nuclear war. However, lawmakers had not yet thought through how to react to the emergence of sophisticated chatbots like ChatGPT.
Days following the letter was made public, Sunak made his inaugural visit to the White House and claimed that the gathering will bring world leaders together around the burgeoning technology, enabling them to harness the advantages of AI while mitigating its risks.
Standing in the White House’s East Room just steps away from President Biden, Sunak declared, “The U.S. and the United Kingdom are the world’s foremost democratic AI powers.” “Therefore, President Joe Biden and I decided to collaborate on AI safety today.”
Instead, the summit—which begins on Wednesday—has brought attention to the disparities in priorities between the White House and 10 Downing Street. With a lecture on Thursday, Sunak raised the extreme but unlikely potential that “humanity could lose ownership of AI completely,” focusing his language on end-of-the-world scenarios.
Global leaders, including the vice president Harris, tech titans, such as Elon Musk of Tesla, as well as top AI experts and civil society organizations, will gather at Bletchley Park, the once-secret location of the renowned World War II coding breakers who cracked Nazi codes, to start the meeting.
Sunak warned that artificial intelligence (AI) may be used to develop chemical weapons or spread stories of child sex abuse, but the UK has so far adopted a lax regulatory stance. After the US and China, Sunak has tried to establish the nation as the third AI power in the world.