By Martin Coulter
LONDON (Reuters) – Last 12 months, a who’s who of world leaders, company executives and educational specialists gathered at Britain’s Bletchley Park for the world’s first world AI Safety Summit, hoping to succeed in consensus on the regulation of a expertise some warned posed a risk to humanity.
Tesla (NASDAQ:) mogul Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rubbed shoulders with a few of their fiercest critics, whereas China co-signed the “Bletchley Declaration” alongside the United States and others, signalling a willingness to cooperate regardless of mounting tensions with the West.
Six months later, the second AI Safety Summit, a primarily digital occasion co-hosted by Britain and South Korea, will happen as hype round synthetic intelligence’s potential offers strategy to questions over its limitations.
“There are some radically different approaches…it will be difficult to move beyond what was agreed at Bletchley Park,” mentioned Martha Bennett, a senior analyst at analysis and advisory agency Forrester, referring to the historic however essentially broad settlement on AI security.
Thornier questions round using copyright materials, information shortage and environmental affect additionally look unlikely to draw such a star-studded congregation.
While organisers have trailered an occasion corresponding to Bletchley, a lot of its key attendees have turned down invites to Seoul.
HYPE
As the primary summit closed in November, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised subsequent occasions can be held each six months so governments might maintain tabs on the rapidly-developing expertise.
Since then, consideration has turned from existential threat to the assets wanted to gas AI’s growth, such because the huge quantity of knowledge required to coach massive language fashions, and the electrical energy powering a rising variety of information centres.
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“The coverage discourse round AI has expanded to incorporate different necessary considerations, reminiscent of market focus and environmental impacts,” said Francine Bennett, interim director of the data and AI-focused Ada Lovelace Institute.
OpenAI CEO Altman has suggested the future of AI depends on an energy breakthrough. In February, the Wall Street Journal reported he was also seeking to raise as much as $7 trillion to boost the production of computer chips, a component currently in short supply.
But pinning the future of AI on scientific breakthroughs and lucrative financing efforts may not be the best move, experts warn.
“The failure of the technology to live up to the hype is inevitable,” said Professor Jack Stilgoe, an expert in technology policy at University College London.
“People will find surprising and creative uses for this technology, but that doesn’t mean the future is going to look how Elon Musk or Sam Altman imagine it.”
Shares in tech giant Meta (NASDAQ:) sank 13% last week after it announced it would double down on AI, although the pay-offs from big investments by Google (NASDAQ:) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:) were cheered by markets.
NO-SHOWS
The May 21-22 South Korea summit was always billed as a “mini summit” in anticipation of the next in-person gathering in Paris.
A virtual “leaders session” on day one, followed by an in-person meeting of technology ministers on day two, were explicitly designed to build on the legacy of Bletchley Park.
But far fewer leaders and ministers are set to attend, according to sources familiar with the matter, even with the French government postponing the next gathering to 2025.
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A spokesperson for the European Union didn’t rule out the bloc’s presence, however confirmed its chief tech regulators – Margrethe Vestager, Thierry Breton and Vera Jourova – wouldn’t be attending.
The U.S. Department of State confirmed it could ship representatives to Seoul, however didn’t say who. The Canadian and Dutch governments mentioned they’d not be attending.
Brazil’s authorities mentioned it was nonetheless contemplating its invitation, citing a conflict with a G20 occasion the nation is internet hosting the identical week.
The Swiss authorities mentioned Ambassador Benedikt Weschsler, head of digitalisation on the division of international affairs, would attend in-person.
“Nothing will ever live up to a first gathering of its kind,” mentioned Linda Griffin, public coverage lead at Mozilla, the organisation behind the Firefox internet browser.
“Getting international agreements is really hard, so it might take a few iterations of these events to find a rhythm.”
Griffin mentioned there was no particular purpose why Mozilla was not attending the Seoul summit however that it was targeted on the Paris occasion.
Similarly, pioneering AI analysis unit Google DeepMind mentioned it welcomed the summit, however declined to substantiate its attendance.
Geoffrey Hinton, a former Google researcher and AI “godfather”, informed Reuters he had declined an invite to the occasion, citing an harm that made it troublesome to fly.
A British authorities spokesperson mentioned: “The AI Seoul Summit will build on the momentum of Bletchley Park to deliver further progress on AI safety, innovation and inclusivity, moving us all closer to a world where AI is improving our lives across the board.”
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