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What UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak couldn’t get from his fellow world leaders, he might get from Elon Musk.
The American tech billionaire will bring some star power to Sunak’s summit on AI safety this week, including a conversation between the two men live-streamed on Musk’s social media platform, X. Sunak organized the international gathering to reassert Britain’s influence in the wake of Brexit and gain an early advantage in a potentially era-defining technology.
While the event at Bletchley Park, the home of Britain’s World War II code-breakers, has attracted numerous top tech executives, state leaders have been harder to come by, as many focus on the threat of an expanding conflict in the Middle East. Italian premier Giorgia Meloni is expected to be the only leader of a Group of Seven nation to attend, with Vice President Kamala Harris representing the US.
The lack of political fire power represents a setback for the premier, who is trying to shape a global approach to AI regulation in the same way his predecessor, Boris Johnson, influenced the response to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Finding areas of international influence has become especially important to British leaders after Brexit.
The summit offers a “test case of the argument that having left the EU, we will have greater flexibility to set our own rules,” said Matthew Gill, program director at the Institute for Government think tank. “Musk attending clearly does raise the summit’s profile.”
AI is also viewed by Sunak’s team as a political strength for someone who studied and worked in Silicon Valley, as they seek to present him as better equipped than Keir Starmer — whose opposition Labour Party leads Sunak’s Conservatives by about 20 points in national surveys — to address technological challenges ahead of an election expected in 2024.
Last week, Sunak warned that AI would make it easier to build chemical and biological weapons, facilitate cyber-attacks, fraud and child sexual abuse, and even pose a risk to humanity itself. There are also benefits, he said, including making public services more cost efficient.
The two-day summit was prompted by UK concerns about powerful AI models expected to be released next year, which will have capabilities the government fears not even developers understand. It’s effectively the first effort to convene global leaders and senior technology executives together to help shape an international approach to AI.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are expected to attend. France is sending Economy Minister Bruno le Maire while Germany will be represented by Digital Minister Volker Wissing.
Representatives of the Chinese government and tech giants Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. will also attend, according to an attendee list published Tuesday.
Part of the problem for Sunak is that even as he highlighted the risks, he has made clear he doesn’t want to “rush to regulate” AI. That effectively turns the summit into a bid to establish a global consensus on what the draft communique from the summit calls the risk of “catastrophic harm” from the technology.
It’s a position that tries to strike a balance between not stifling innovation and business, which is part of Sunak’s political pitch, and the government’s promise to protect voters from potential threats.
Yet it puts the UK behind the US and EU, which have begun to introduce legislation to regulate AI. Data from Reed Recruitment analyzed by Bloomberg shows that England’s artificial intelligence sector has about half the jobs open that it did two years ago, undermining Sunak’s pledge to build up the industry.
Still, Sunak can emerge from Bletchley Park with a communique signed by 28 countries. The language has been re-drafted to give governments wiggle room for their domestic legislation, according to a person familiar with the process.
For example, a draft seen by Bloomberg and dated October 16 said AI “must” be designed to be human-centric, safe, trustworthy and responsible. A more recent version dated October 25 changed that to “should.”
“I’m managing my own expectations what comes through,” said Rohan Malik, government and infrastructure leader for UK and Ireland at consultancy EY. “It’s two days and it’s a very diverse group of people.”
Three UK government officials said they expect Musk to attend the summit, in addition to the conversation with Sunak to be streamed on X, formerly known as Twitter. Other business executives due to attend include former UK deputy premier Nick Clegg, now president of global affairs at Meta Platforms Inc, as well as James Manyika and Demis Hassabis from Alphabet Inc’s Google and DeepMind Technologies Ltd.
The UK published a study on Friday which summarized — but didn’t mandate — ways companies could tackle risks. To help prevent scenarios where AI could be used to develop hacking tools or weapons, it said, firms could share information with governments and each other, introduce corporate governance, and be ready to delay releases or roll back to previous versions.
In response to a request from the UK, Amazon.com Inc, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI and Microsoft Corp published their own safety policies, including simulating attacks on or malicious use of their systems.
This summit is “absolutely vital” for the UK, said Maya Dillon, head of AI at Cambridge Consultants. “It’s our way of saying to the world, we still lead the way in the development of technology,” she said. Goals should be a time frame for regulation and legislation, and a mandate for transparency of AI usage in areas including medicine and financial services, she said.
Yet in a sign of the US’s center of gravity in AI, all the companies cited commitments they made in July alongside US President Joe Biden. Companies and technology ministers are the main focus of the first day of the summit on Wednesday, led by UK Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan.
“Elon Musk is obviously a big name and high-profile, and that might lend profile or a media bounce for the summit,” said Adam Cantwell-Corn, policy lead at Connected by Data, a campaign group. “What is needed is to re-balance the AI policy-making to reflect the various different interests that different groups in society have within it, rather than further weighting it towards a pretty narrow subset of very wealthy companies and men.”
The American tech billionaire will bring some star power to Sunak’s summit on AI safety this week, including a conversation between the two men live-streamed on Musk’s social media platform, X. Sunak organized the international gathering to reassert Britain’s influence in the wake of Brexit and gain an early advantage in a potentially era-defining technology.
While the event at Bletchley Park, the home of Britain’s World War II code-breakers, has attracted numerous top tech executives, state leaders have been harder to come by, as many focus on the threat of an expanding conflict in the Middle East. Italian premier Giorgia Meloni is expected to be the only leader of a Group of Seven nation to attend, with Vice President Kamala Harris representing the US.
The lack of political fire power represents a setback for the premier, who is trying to shape a global approach to AI regulation in the same way his predecessor, Boris Johnson, influenced the response to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Finding areas of international influence has become especially important to British leaders after Brexit.
The summit offers a “test case of the argument that having left the EU, we will have greater flexibility to set our own rules,” said Matthew Gill, program director at the Institute for Government think tank. “Musk attending clearly does raise the summit’s profile.”
AI is also viewed by Sunak’s team as a political strength for someone who studied and worked in Silicon Valley, as they seek to present him as better equipped than Keir Starmer — whose opposition Labour Party leads Sunak’s Conservatives by about 20 points in national surveys — to address technological challenges ahead of an election expected in 2024.
Last week, Sunak warned that AI would make it easier to build chemical and biological weapons, facilitate cyber-attacks, fraud and child sexual abuse, and even pose a risk to humanity itself. There are also benefits, he said, including making public services more cost efficient.
The two-day summit was prompted by UK concerns about powerful AI models expected to be released next year, which will have capabilities the government fears not even developers understand. It’s effectively the first effort to convene global leaders and senior technology executives together to help shape an international approach to AI.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are expected to attend. France is sending Economy Minister Bruno le Maire while Germany will be represented by Digital Minister Volker Wissing.
Representatives of the Chinese government and tech giants Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. will also attend, according to an attendee list published Tuesday.
Part of the problem for Sunak is that even as he highlighted the risks, he has made clear he doesn’t want to “rush to regulate” AI. That effectively turns the summit into a bid to establish a global consensus on what the draft communique from the summit calls the risk of “catastrophic harm” from the technology.
It’s a position that tries to strike a balance between not stifling innovation and business, which is part of Sunak’s political pitch, and the government’s promise to protect voters from potential threats.
Yet it puts the UK behind the US and EU, which have begun to introduce legislation to regulate AI. Data from Reed Recruitment analyzed by Bloomberg shows that England’s artificial intelligence sector has about half the jobs open that it did two years ago, undermining Sunak’s pledge to build up the industry.
Still, Sunak can emerge from Bletchley Park with a communique signed by 28 countries. The language has been re-drafted to give governments wiggle room for their domestic legislation, according to a person familiar with the process.
For example, a draft seen by Bloomberg and dated October 16 said AI “must” be designed to be human-centric, safe, trustworthy and responsible. A more recent version dated October 25 changed that to “should.”
“I’m managing my own expectations what comes through,” said Rohan Malik, government and infrastructure leader for UK and Ireland at consultancy EY. “It’s two days and it’s a very diverse group of people.”
Three UK government officials said they expect Musk to attend the summit, in addition to the conversation with Sunak to be streamed on X, formerly known as Twitter. Other business executives due to attend include former UK deputy premier Nick Clegg, now president of global affairs at Meta Platforms Inc, as well as James Manyika and Demis Hassabis from Alphabet Inc’s Google and DeepMind Technologies Ltd.
The UK published a study on Friday which summarized — but didn’t mandate — ways companies could tackle risks. To help prevent scenarios where AI could be used to develop hacking tools or weapons, it said, firms could share information with governments and each other, introduce corporate governance, and be ready to delay releases or roll back to previous versions.
In response to a request from the UK, Amazon.com Inc, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI and Microsoft Corp published their own safety policies, including simulating attacks on or malicious use of their systems.
This summit is “absolutely vital” for the UK, said Maya Dillon, head of AI at Cambridge Consultants. “It’s our way of saying to the world, we still lead the way in the development of technology,” she said. Goals should be a time frame for regulation and legislation, and a mandate for transparency of AI usage in areas including medicine and financial services, she said.
Yet in a sign of the US’s center of gravity in AI, all the companies cited commitments they made in July alongside US President Joe Biden. Companies and technology ministers are the main focus of the first day of the summit on Wednesday, led by UK Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan.
“Elon Musk is obviously a big name and high-profile, and that might lend profile or a media bounce for the summit,” said Adam Cantwell-Corn, policy lead at Connected by Data, a campaign group. “What is needed is to re-balance the AI policy-making to reflect the various different interests that different groups in society have within it, rather than further weighting it towards a pretty narrow subset of very wealthy companies and men.”
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