The Bletchley summit communique does not agree to set up a testing hub in the UK, as some in the government had hoped
The UK, US, EU, Australia and China agreed that artificial intelligence poses a potentially catastrophic risk to humanity in the first international declaration to deal with the fast-emerging technology.
Twenty-eight governments signed up to the so-called Bletchley declaration on the first day of the AI safety summit hosted by the British government. The countries agreed to work together on AI safety research, even amid signs that the US and UK are competing to take the lead over developing new regulations.
Rishi Sunak welcomed the declaration, calling it “quite incredible”.
In remarks ahead of his appearance at the summit on Thursday, the prime minister added: “There will be nothing more transformative to the futures of our children and grandchildren than technological advances like AI.
“We owe it to them to ensure AI develops safely and responsibly, gripping the risks it poses early enough.”
Michelle Donelan, the UK technology secretary, told reporters: “For the first time, we now have countries agreeing that we need to look not just independently but collectively at the risks around frontier AI.”
Frontier AI refers to the most cutting-edge systems, which some experts believe could become more intelligent than people at various tasks. Speaking to the PA news agency on the sidelines of the summit, Elon Musk, the owner Tesla and SpaceX, and of X, formerly Twitter, warned: “For the first time, we have a situation where there’s something that is going to be far smarter than the smartest human … it’s not clear to me we can control such a thing.”
The communique marks a diplomatic success for the UK and Sunak, who decided to host the summit this summer after becoming concerned with how AI models were advancing rapidly without oversight.
Donelan opened the summit by telling her fellow participants that the development of AI “can’t be left to chance or neglect or private actors alone”.
She was joined onstage by the US commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, and the Chinese vice-minister of science and technology, Wu Zhaohui, in a rare show of global unity.
Matt Clifford, one of the British officials in charge of organising the summit, called the appearance of Raimondo and Wu together on stage “a remarkable moment”.
China signed the declaration, which included the sentence: “We welcome the international community’s efforts so far to cooperate on AI to promote inclusive economic growth, sustainable development and innovation, to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms, and to foster public trust and confidence in AI systems to realise their potential fully.”
Wu told fellow delegates: “We uphold the principles of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefits. Countries, regardless of their size and scale, have equal rights to develop and use AI.”
South Korea has agreed to host another such summit in six months, while France will host one in a year.
So far, however, there is little international agreement over what a global set of AI regulations might look like or who should draw them up.
Some British officials had hoped other countries would agree to beef up the government’s AI task force so that it could be used to test new models from around the world before they are released to the public.
Instead, Raimondo used the summit to announce a separate American AI Safety Institute within thecountry’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, which she called “a neutral third party to develop best-in-class standards”, adding that the institute would develop its own rules for safety, security and testing.
Earlier this week, the Biden administration released an executive order requiring US AI companies like OpenAI and Google to share their safety test results with the government before releasing AI models.
Kamala Harris, the vice president, then gave a speech on AI in London in which she talked about the importance of regulating existing AI models and more advanced ones in the future.
Clifford denied any suggestion of a split between the US and the UK on which country should take the global lead on AI regulation.
“You’ll have heard Secretary Raimondo praise us in a full-throated way and talk about the partnership that she wants to have between the UK and the US safety institute,” he said. “I think that that shows the depth of the partnership.”
Sunak said the summit had proved “the appetite from all of those people for the UK to take a leadership role”.
The EU is in the process of passing an AI bill, which aims to develop a set of principles for regulation, as well as bring in rules for specific technologies such as live facial recognition.
Donelan suggested the government would not include an AI bill in the king’s speech next week, saying: “We need to understand the problem before we apply the solutions properly.”
But she denied the UK was falling behind its international counterparts, adding: “We have called the world together – the first ever global summit on AI at the frontier – and we shouldn’t minimise or overlook that.”
