Can world leaders get a handle on AI? British top makes a start

In 1950, Alan Turing, the gifted British mathematician and codebreaker, published one paper in the field of artificial intelligence. His goal, he wrote, was to ponder the question: “Can machines think?”

The answer is almost 12,000 words. But it ends succinctly: “We can only look a little ahead,” wrote Turing, “but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”

More than seventy years later, this sentiment sums up the mood of many policymakers, researchers and technology leaders arriving Wednesday at Britain’s AI Safety Summit, which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hopes will position the country as a leader in the global race to secure the safety of the world. to utilize and regulate the economy. artificial intelligence.

Governments have been working to address the risks posed by the rapidly evolving technology since the release last year of ChatGPT, a human-like chatbot that demonstrated how the latest models are evolving in unpredictable ways.

Future generations of AI systems could have great potential to improve disease diagnosis, combat climate change and streamline manufacturing processes, but also pose significant dangers in terms of job losses, disinformation and national security. A report from the British government last week warned that advanced AI systems “could help bad actors launch cyberattacks, conduct disinformation campaigns and design biological or chemical weapons.”

Mr Sunak has promoted this week’s event, which brings together governments, businesses, researchers and civil society groups, as an opportunity to start developing global safety standards.

The two-day summit will be held at Bletchley Park, an estate 50 miles north of London where Mr Turing helped crack the Enigma code used by the Nazis during the Second World War. The location is considered one of the birthplaces of modern computing and is a deliberate nod to the Prime Minister’s hopes that Britain could be at the center of another world-leading initiative.

Bletchley is “evocative because it captures a very defining moment in time, where great leadership was needed from government, but also a moment when computing was central,” says Ian Hogarth, a technology entrepreneur and investor appointed by Mr. Sunak. to lead the government task force on AI risks, and who helped organize the summit. “We need to come together and agree on a sensible path forward.”

On behalf of the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris will participate in the meetings, and Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, and Giorgia Meloni, the Italian Prime Minister, are also expected.

Representatives of China, a major developer of artificial intelligence that has been largely absent from many international discussions about governance, are scheduled to attendalong with delegates from a total of 27 governments, including Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine.

In a speech on Friday, Mr Sunak addressed criticism he had received from China hawks within his Conservative Party over the presence of a delegation from Beijing. “Yes – we invited China” he said. “I know there are some who will say they should have been excluded. But there can be no serious strategy for AI without at least trying to involve all the leading AI powers in the world. That may not have been the easy thing to do, but it was the right thing to do.”

Executives from leading technology and AI companies including Anthropic, Google DeepMind, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI and Tencent will attend the conference. A number of civil society organizations will also send representatives, including Britain’s Ada Lovelace Institute and the Algorithmic Justice League, a Massachusetts nonprofit.

In a surprising move, Mr Sunak announced Monday that he would participate in a live interview with Elon Musk, the billionaire technology mogul, on his social media platform X after the summit concludes Thursday.

Some analysts argue that the conference could weigh more heavily on symbolism than substance as a number of key political leaders would be absent, including President Biden, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, and Olaf Scholz, the chancellor of Germany.

And many governments are moving forward with their own laws and regulations. In the United States, President Biden announced an executive order this week requiring AI companies to assess national security risks before releasing their technology to the public. The European Union’s “AI law,” which could be finalized within weeks, represents a far-reaching attempt to regulate use of the technology and protect citizens from harm. China is also cracking down on the way AI is used, including censoring chatbots.

Britain, home to many universities where artificial intelligence research is conducted, has taken a more hands-off approach. The government believes that the existing legislation and regulations are sufficient for the time being and is announcing a new AI Safety Institute that will evaluate and test new models.

Mr Hogarth, whose team negotiated early access to the models of several major AI companies to investigate their security, he said he believed Britain could play an important role in figuring out how governments can “take the benefits of these technologies and put guardrails around them. ”

In his speech last week, Mr Sunak confirmed that the UK’s approach to the potential risks of the technology is to “not rush into regulation.”

“How can we write laws that make sense for something we don’t fully understand yet?” he said.