UK Summit to Address AI Risks with Elon Musk and Rishi Sunak
After concluding his AI summit on Thursday, Rishi Sunak intends to engage in a live-streamed discussion with Elon Musk, adding a touch of celebrity influence to an event that the UK prime minister aspires to utilize in shaping regulations for the burgeoning technology.
Sunak announced the conversation with Musk on the billionaire’s social media platform X on Monday. The prime minister’s aides touted the event as evidence that a summit planned for Wednesday and Thursday at Britain’s Second World War code-breaking hub was gaining traction.
Three British government officials said they also expect Musk to attend the Bletchley Park summit, although Musk has not publicly confirmed his attendance. Neither Musk nor representatives of X and Tesla Inc., where Musk serves as CEO, responded to requests for comment.
Musk, the world’s richest man and owner of social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, began contacting Britain in recent days, the people said, asking not to be named because the conversations were private.
His attendance would add celebrity to the summit, which Sunak hoped would attract the leaders of the world’s major powers as well as high-tech leaders. World leaders expected to attend include Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and US Vice President Kamala Harris.
Sunak convened the summit in an effort to map out an international approach to regulating artificial intelligence to protect against its worst possible uses, such as rigging elections, enabling terrorists to spread destruction, and facilitating the development of chemical and biological weapons. In a speech on Thursday, Sunak also warned of an “unlikely” existential threat if humanity loses control of technology.
In July, Musk launched xAI, an artificial intelligence company that is separate from his other companies but plans to collaborate with them on its website. He co-founded OpenAI, the highest-profile AI startup and developer of ChatGPT, but since stepping down from the board in 2018, he has been critical of the company, especially after it created a for-profit arm the following year.
In September, he said it was important for AI to have a “judge” at a meeting in Washington. In March, he was one of hundreds of technology leaders who called for a halt to technology development.
Microsoft Corp.’s Brad Smith, former British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, now head of global affairs at Meta Platforms Inc., and James Manyika and Demis Hassabis of Alphabet Inc.’s Google and DeepMind Technologies Ltd. are likely to be among the 100 or so who attended the summit among people from 28 countries.
