“Artificial Intelligence has incredible potential to transform our lives for the better, but we need to make sure it is developed and used in a safe way”
The British Government will host next autumn the first international conference to assess “the most significant risks” of the Artificial intelligence (AI) and create a body to ensure the security of technology on a planetary scale. Artificial intelligence, after the war in Ukraine, was the priority issue of the ‘premier’ Rishi Sunak in his meeting at the White House with President Joe Biden.
“Artificial Intelligence has incredible potential to transform our lives for the better, but we need to ensure it is developed and used in a safe way,” Sunak said, announcing the UK’s willingness to lead the global effort. .
“Our goal will be to unite countries, researchers and technology companies to agree on a series of measures that allow us to monitor risks”stressed the “premier”, who recalled the advantageous position of his country, with more than 50,000 jobs linked to the AI sector, valued at around 4,500 million euros.
The announcement comes days after a letter signed by 350 experts in the field – including the CEO of OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT – warning that the technology could lead to the extinction of humanity. According to the teacher Nick Bostromat the head of the Institute for the Future of Humanity at the University of Oxford, Artificial Intelligence can become the “greatest existential risk”ahead of climate change and other threats.
Matt Cliffordat the head of the British government’s shock force, this week launched the alert voice in an interview on TalkTV that has had a wide echo in British society: “In the industry we talk about short-term and long-term threats, which they are really quite scary… We are talking about the ability of AI to create new biological weapons or cyber attacks on a large scale, really bad things.
“We can have very dangerous threats to humanity simply with the models that can be ready in two years’ time,” Clifford added. “It sounds like a movie script, but it’s a real threat. If we don’t know how to control this, we’re going to create the potential for all kinds of risks.”
The reactions to the announcement of the AI summit have not been long in coming. Yasmin Afinain charge of the Chatham House Digital Society Initiative, warned that the meeting promoted by the British Government could clash with reality and err on the side of “too ambitious”, starting with the fact that “none of the leading AI companies are based in the UK.”
“Today there are very marked differences in chapters such as governance and regulation of new technologies between the European Union and the United States,” Afina declared. “The United Kingdom can try to reconcile the different perspectives, but there are already initiatives such as the Global Digital Compact of the UN that starts from a broader base”.
The European Union is developing its own Artificial Intelligence Law, but the community authorities have recognized that in the best of cases it would still take two years to be able to enter into force. The EU’s top technology officer, Margrethe Vestager, reported last month that Brussels is already working on developing a “voluntary code” that can also be signed by the AI sector in the United States.
China has taken the first steps to introduce regulations, including a proposal to make it mandatory to notify consumers when a company uses an AI algorithm. The British government actually plans to invite China to the global summit, given the weight of the Asian country in the sector.
The issue has raised blisters among supporters of a ‘hard line’ towards Beijingsuch as former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, who used the occasion to denounce China’s record of “thwarting its international trade commitments” and using sophisticated technology to spy on its own citizens.
According to a spokesman for the British government, the countries invited to the summit will be all those that “share the recognition that AI offers great opportunities, but that admit the need to put guardrails for its development.” Russia not being invited to the summit because of the war in Ukraine and because it is not considered a power in the sector.
The initiative has been met with suspicion and skepticism in some quarters. The American Billionaire Alex Karpexecutive director of Palantir, told the BBC that it is the technology companies that have not yet commercialized AI products that want to press the “pause” button: “The race is on, and the only question is this: do we continue to lead or do we cede leadership?
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