Sunak to hold talks with Biden on the deadly threat of A.I.
rISHI Sunak yesterday confirmed he would discuss the threat from artificial intelligence with Joe Biden when they meet in the United States next week.
The Prime Minister made the pledge after retweeting a dramatic statement, signed by some of the biggest names in AI, which warned it could wipe out human life.
The Government is ‘looking very carefully’ at the technology, which many experts think could weaponise fake news, replace millions of jobs and be used to develop chemical weapons.
Mr Sunak last week discussed the need for regulation with the chief executives of ChatGPT firm openAI, Google’s AI arm Deepmind, and AI research company Anthropic.
one of the ‘godfathers’ of AI, Professor Yoshua Bengio, has described his fears over ‘bad actors’ misusing it and said he now feels ‘lost’ over his life’s work.
on the political direction regarding AI, Mr Sunak said yesterday: ‘AI clearly can bring massive benefits to the economy and society. But we need to make sure this is done in a way that is safe and secure. That’s why I met last week with the CEos of major AI companies to discuss what are the guardrails that we need to put in place, what’s the type of regulation that should be put in place to keep us safe.
‘ People will be concerned by the reports that AI poses an existential risk A.I.‘COULD WIPE OUT HUMANITY’ like pandemics or nuclear wars – I want them to be reassured that the Government is looking very carefully at this.
‘The UK can play a leadership role because, ultimately, we’re only going to grapple with this problem and solve it if we work together. It’s something that I’ve already been discussing with other leaders at the G7 summit the other week, and I’ll be doing that again when I visit the US very soon.’
The statement follows European Union tech chief Margrethe Vestager saying she believed a draft voluntary code of conduct for AI could be drawn up ‘within the next weeks’ after a meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council.
China’s ruling Communist Party is calling for beefed-up national security measures, highlighting the risks posed by artificial intelligence.
This week more than 350 people signed the statement retweeted by Mr Sunak, warning that the threat from AI is now on a par with nuclear war and pandemics.
Signatories included Sam Altman of openAI, which made the language tool ChatGPT, and Demis Hassabis, the chief executive of Google DeepMind.
Professor Bengio, who also signed, told the BBC he was worried about the wrong people getting their hands on sophisticated and powerful AI: ‘It might be military, it might be terrorists, it might be somebody very angry, psychotic.
‘If it’s easy to program these AI systems to ask them to do something very bad, this could be very dangerous.’