(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Bloomberg
What UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak couldn't get from his fellow world leaders, he might get from Elon Musk.
The American tech billionaire will bring some star power to Sunak's summit on AI safety this week, including a conversation between the two men live-streamed on Musk's social media platform, X.
Sunak organized the international gathering to reassert Britain's influence in the wake of Brexit and gain an early advantage in a potentially era-defining technology.
While the event at Bletchley Park, the home of Britain's World War II code-breakers, has attracted numerous top tech executives, state leaders have been harder to come by, as many focus on the threat of an expanding conflict in the Middle East.
Elon Musk/File photo
Italian premier Giorgia Meloni is expected to be the only leader of a Group of Seven nation to attend, with Vice President Kamala Harris representing the US.
The lack of political fire power represents a setback for the premier, who is trying to shape a global approach to AI regulation in the same way his predecessor, Boris Johnson, influenced the response to Russia's war in Ukraine.
Finding areas of international influence has become especially important to British leaders after Brexit.
The summit offers a "test case of the argument that having left the EU, we will have greater flexibility to set our own rules,” said Matthew Gill, program director at the Institute for Government think tank. "Musk attending clearly does raise the summit's profile.”
AI is also viewed by Sunak's team as a political strength for someone who studied and worked in Silicon Valley, as they seek to present him as better equipped than Keir Starmer - whose opposition Labour Party leads Sunak's Conservatives by about 20 points in national surveys - to address technological challenges ahead of an election expected in 2024.
Last week, Sunak warned that AI would make it easier to build chemical and biological weapons, facilitate cyber-attacks, fraud and child sexual abuse, and even pose a risk to humanity itself. There are also benefits, he said, including making public services more cost efficient.
The two-day summit was prompted by UK concerns about powerful AI models expected to be released next year, which will have capabilities the government fears not even developers understand.
It's effectively the first effort to convene global leaders and senior technology executives together to help shape an international approach to AI.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are expected to attend. France is sending Economy Minister Bruno le Maire while Germany will be represented by Digital Minister Volker Wissing.
Representatives of the Chinese government and tech giants Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. will also attend, according to an attendee list published Tuesday.
Part of the problem for Sunak is that even as he highlighted the risks, he has made clear he doesn't want to "rush to regulate” AI.
That effectively turns the summit into a bid to establish a global consensus on what the draft communique from the summit calls the risk of "catastrophic harm” from the technology.
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