U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are set to join delegates Thursday at a U.K. summit focused on containing risks from rapid advances in cutting-edge artificial intelligence.
Sunak organized the first-ever AI Safety Summit as a forum for officials, experts, and the tech industry to better understand “frontier” AI that some scientists warn could pose a risk to humanity’s very existence.
The meeting, held at a former codebreaking spy base near London, kicked off on Wednesday with an agreement signed by 28 nations, including the U.S. and China, to work toward “shared agreement and responsibility” about AI risks, and a plan to hold further meetings in South Korea and France over the next year.
Binding regulation for AI is not among the summit’s goals. Sunak has said that the U.K.’s approach should not be to rush into regulation but to fully understand AI first.
Harris did not attend the meeting’s first day, instead giving a speech at the U.S. Embassy where she said the world needs to act right away to address “the full spectrum” of AI risks, not just existential threats such as massive cyberattacks or AI-formulated bioweapons.
She announced a new U.S. AI safety institute to draw up standards for testing AI models for public use. Sunak had also proposed his own AI safety institute, with a similar role, days earlier.
Sunak has also proposed a global expert panel on AI, similar to the United Nations climate change panel. He’s expected to provide more details on Thursday and is also scheduled to discuss AI with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a conversation that will be played on the social network X, which Musk owns, after the summit ends.
