Sunak in Washington to discuss AI, Ukraine

LONDON: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak flew to Washington late on Tuesday, lobbying for Britain to take a lead role in regulating artificial intelligence after a dire warning of the technology’s existential dangers.

Mr Sunak will meet President Joe Biden today for a White House summit, pledging unstinting support for Ukraine after Russia was accused of blowing up a major dam to thwart an apparent counter-offensive.

Any intentional attack on the Kakhovka dam would represent “the largest attack on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine since the start of the war, and just would demonstrate the new lows that we would have seen from Russian aggression,” Mr Sunak told reporters aboard his plane from London.

But while the United States and Britain are inching closer to giving Ukraine air support and on a robust approach to China, Mr Sunak faces a harder sell with Mr Biden about the UK’s post-Brexit relevance elsewhere.

The need for a coordinated response on AI was underlined by Downing Street task force advisor Matt Clifford, who warned the chances of the fastlearning systems wiping out humanity within two years were “not zero.”

Interviewed on TalkTV, he said the world needed “to regulate them on a global scale, because it’s not enough, I think to regulate them nationally.”

Mr Sunak wants a future global AI regulator to be based in London, according to sources, arguing Britain has the requisite expertise and size of tech sector.

But it is pushing uphill as the United States talks directly to the European Union about AI regulation, to build on a pledge by G7 leaders, including Mr Sunak in Japan last month.

And Mr Sunak, who meets US business leaders before today’s summit, has given up on securing a post-Brexit trade deal with the Biden administration any time soon.

Underlining the US-UK military alliance at the heart of Nato, Mr Sunak said their economic relationship should also be deployed to defend Western democracy.

“By combining our vast economic resources and expertise, we will grow our economies, create jobs and keep our people safe long into the future,” said the prime minister.

“Just as interoperability between our militaries has given us a battlefield advantage over our adversaries, greater economic interoperability will give us a crucial edge in the decades ahead,” Mr Sunak said.