The UK will host the first big global summit on AI safety, the Prime Minister announced today (Wednesday, June 7). This comes as the world tries to figure out how to deal with the challenges and opportunities brought by the fast development of AI.
AI keeps coming up with ways to make our lives better, from helping paralyzed people walk again to finding antibiotics that kill superbugs. But the development of AI is moving very quickly, and this kind of change needs leaders who can adapt quickly. So, the UK is taking action, because we have a world duty to make sure this technology is developed and used in a safe and responsible way.
Last week, dozens of top experts warned that artificial intelligence (AI) could put people in danger in the same way that pandemics or nuclear weapons do.
Today, the Prime Minister will be in Washington, DC, where he will talk about how important it is for allies and companies with similar goals to work together to create an international framework for the safe and reliable creation and use of AI.
The meeting, which will be held in the UK this fall, will talk about the risks of AI, including those of frontier systems, and how they can be reduced through coordinated action on a global scale. It will also give countries a place to meet and talk about how they can work together to reduce these risks.
In the past few weeks, the Prime Minister has talked with a number of businesspeople and world leaders about this problem. This includes every member of the G7, who all agreed at the Hiroshima Summit last month that they wanted to work together on this problem.
In May, the PM met with the CEOs of the three most advanced AI labs, OpenAI, DeepMind, and Anthropic, in Downing Street. The Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology also held a roundtable with top AI leaders. The work done at the AI safety meeting will build on what has been talked about recently at the G7, the OECD, and the Global Partnership on AI.
In July, the Foreign Secretary will also hold the first-ever meeting for the UN Security Council on the benefits and risks of AI for peace and security around the world.
The UK is a good place to hold talks about the future of AI. The UK is third in the world when it comes to AI, after the US and China. The AI industry in the UK is already worth £3.7 billion and employs 50,000 people all over the country.
We’ll also be able to respond more quickly and nimbly to changes in this market now that we’re out of the EU. The UK was one of the first major countries to make a plan for the safe and responsible growth of AI. This plan will be able to keep up with how fast this technology is changing. And the UK has set up an expert taskforce to help build and use the next generation of safe AI. This is backed by £100 million in funding, and the UK has also promised to spend £900 million developing computing power, including building an exascale supercomputer in the UK.
The Prime Minister said that AI has an amazing chance of making our lives better. But we have to make sure that it is built and used in a safe and private way.
We have made paradigm-shifting new tools over and over again in history, and we have always used them for the good of humanity. We need to do that again.
This can’t be done by just one country. The whole world will have to work on this. But the UK will stand with our friends to show the way. We have a lot of experience and are committed to an open, democratic international system.
Last month, both OpenAI and Anthropic opened offices in London. OpenAI chose the UK company Faculty as their technical integration partner, and Google Deepmind, led by Demis Hassabis and based in King’s Cross, announced that it would be growing.
Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind, said that AI brings amazing possibilities and challenges to the world, and that international cooperation is needed to make sure that this technology is developed in a safe and responsible way for everyone’s benefit.
The Global Summit on AI Safety will play a key part in bringing together government, industry, academia, and civil society, and we’re looking forward to working closely with the UK Government to help make these efforts a success.
The CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, said that making AI safe is very important. There is still a huge amount of work to be done. So, we applaud the Prime Minister for bringing the world together to find answers and have smart talks.
US tech giant Palantir also announced today that it will make the UK its new European HQ for AI research. This is because of the UK’s strong AI skills. Palantir already has more than 800 employees in the UK, and it has given many of the world’s most important businesses and institutions the architecture they need to handle data.
Alexander C. Karp, co-founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies Inc. and head of The Palantir Foundation for Defense Policy and International Affairs, said:
The long-term success and survival of institutions will depend on how well they can take advantage of recent improvements in artificial intelligence, especially in large language models.
We are happy to strengthen our relationship with the United Kingdom, where we have almost a quarter of our employees. London is a big draw for the best software engineers in the world, so it makes sense to make it the center of our efforts in Europe to make the best artificial intelligence software solutions that are also ethical.
Today, the Prime Minister will meet with President Biden at the White House to talk about many things related to the relationship between the UK and the US. In particular, they will talk about how we can work together to improve our economies and solidify our joint leadership in the technologies of the future.
Only three countries in the world have a tech business worth more than $1 trillion. The US and UK are two of those three countries. This is in part because of how good our universities and research institutions are. Between us, we have 7 of the top 10 research universities in the world.
The Prime Minister will also say that the UK Government will give more grants to students doing post-graduate study and research at UK and US universities. This will improve our shared knowledge in STEM fields.
With the rise in scholarships that was announced today, the number of Marshall scholarships will go up by 25%, to 50 a year. The Marshall plan was set up 70 years ago to give high-achieving Americans the chance to study for two years in the UK. Two current Supreme Court Justices and the founders of companies like Dolby Labs and LinkedIn are among the people who have gone through the school.
The UK will also pay for five new Fulbright scholarships every year. This is more than the 25 scholarships it already pays for. The US pays most of the money for the Fulbright program, which helps international students learn in the US and vice versa. Since the program began in 1948, about 15,000 British people have used Fulbright grants to study in the US.
These new scholarships will focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) topics. This will help the UK and the US share more knowledge about the technologies of the future.
Hugh Milward, Vice President of External Affairs at Microsoft UK, said that AI could help solve some of society’s biggest problems in a basic way. But it will need the kind of multilateral agreement that the Prime Minister is suggesting to help build trust and deal with the other problems that AI brings.
CEO of Faculty, Dr. Marc Warner, said, “The potential of this technology is amazing, but we need to make sure it’s used in a way that puts people first and is safe.”
This will require the UK to be a leader in technology and to be able to help people around the world work together. Both of these are things that the UK is well-suited to do.
