The prime minister wants progress on this tech to be his legacy, but in truth he is failing to equip us for the challenges it brings
Tue 31 Oct 2023 05.59 EDT
The UK’s AI safety summit opens at Bletchley Park this week, and is the passion project of Rishi Sunak: a prime minister desperate for a good news story as his government looks down the barrel of a crushing election defeat.
Sunak appears to want progress on AI to become his lasting legacy. Last week, he delivered a speech about the risks of AI if weaponised by terrorists and cybercriminals, and published a series of documents on “frontier AI”, an industry term for generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and DALL-E. He even unveiled a UK AI safety institute.
The message was clear. The slick – albeit very behind in the polls – Stanford MBA grad who likes to holiday in California had, to use a favoured phrase of his, “got to grips” with the problem. The British people, according to Sunak, “should have peace of mind that we’re developing the most advanced protections for AI of any country in the world”.
And…
