China Agrees To Work With US And EU To Manage AI Risks At Bletchley Park

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak convened the global AI security summit. (photo: twitter @rishisunak)

JAKARTA - On Wednesday, November 1, China agreed to work with the United States, the European Union and other countries to collectively manage risks from artificial intelligence at a meeting in the UK aimed at determining a safe direction for the rapidly developing technology.

Some technology executives and political leaders have warned that the rapid development of AI poses an existential threat to the world if not controlled, sparking a race by governments and international institutions to devise safeguards and regulations.

In a first step for Western efforts to manage safe AI development, a Chinese deputy minister joined US and EU leaders as well as tech bosses such as Elon Musk and ChatGPT's Sam Altman at Bletchley Park, the home of Britain's World War II codebreakers.

More than 25 countries present, including the United States and China, as well as the EU, signed the "Bletchley Declaration" stating that countries need to work together and establish a common approach to surveillance.

The Declaration sets out a two-pronged agenda focused on identifying risks of common concern and building scientific understanding of them, while also developing cross-country policies to mitigate them.

Wu Zhaohui, China's vice minister of science and technology, said in the opening session of the two-day meeting that Beijing was ready to step up collaboration on AI safety to help build an international "governance framework."

"Countries regardless of their size and scale have the same right to develop and use AI," Wu said as quoted by VOI from Reuters.

Fears about the impact of AI on the economy and society soared in November last year when Microsoft-backed OpenAI  made ChatGPT available to the public.

By using natural language processing tools to create human-like dialogue, it has raised fears, including among some AI pioneers, that machines could one day achieve greater intelligence than humans, leading to limitless and unintended consequences.

Governments and officials are now trying to determine a way forward with AI companies worried about being burdened by regulations before the technology reaches its full potential.

"I don't know what a fair rule is, but you have to start with insight before you do surveillance," Musk told reporters. It added that a "third-party referee" could be used to provide warnings when risks arise.

While the European Union has focused its scrutiny on data privacy and surveillance and its potential impact on human rights, the meeting in the UK highlighted the “essential” risks of a highly capable general AI model called “frontier AI.”

Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google Deepmind, told reporters he didn't think current frontier AI models were causing "significant catastrophic damage" but said it made sense to plan for the future as the industry trains ever-larger models.

The event is the brainchild of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who wants to take on a post-Brexit role for his country as an intermediary between the economic blocs of the United States, China and the EU.

Britain's digital minister, Michelle Donelan, said it was a huge achievement to get so many key players in one room. He announced two further AI Security Summits, one to be held in South Korea in six months and the other in France six months after that.

"For the first time, we now have countries agreeing that we need to look not just independently but collectively at the risks around the AI frontier," Donelan told reporters.

Just as technology companies compete for dominance in AI, governments are jockeying for the lead in regulation.

China is a key participant in this meeting, given the country's role in developing AI. But some British lawmakers have questioned whether the country should attend given the low level of trust between Beijing, Washington and many European capitals when it comes to China's involvement in technology.

The United States clearly confirmed on the eve of the meeting that the invitation to Beijing had indeed come from Britain, with its Ambassador in London, Jane Hartley, telling Reuters: "This is an invitation from the UK, not from the US."

US Vice President Kamala Harris' decision to give a speech in London on Wednesday about her government's response to AI, and hold several meetings with participants outside the summit, also raised a number of questions.

Sachin Dev Duggal, founder of London-based AI company Builder.ai, said it risked undermining the core focus of the event, while some MPs from Sunak's Conservative Party suggested that Washington was trying to upstage Sunak's meeting.

British officials deny that, saying they want as many votes as possible.

Just days after US President Joe Biden signed an executive order on AI, his administration used a meeting in the UK to announce that it would launch the US AI Safety Institute.

Harris will meet with Sunak on Wednesday, including for dinner, and attend the second day of meetings on Thursday, November 2.