One of the prime minister’s priorities this autumn is the successful delivery of the global AI safety summit. But what does success look like?
The AI summit is about safety. These safety concerns can be broadly split in two: national security, and economic risk. National security risk must then be split into military and civil risk.
On the military side, as evidenced by the standstill at the UN on the development of autonomous weapons – blocked at stages by the UK itself – there’s little hope of global consensus.
If China is at the summit, which it ought to be, the military aspect will be off the agenda. Geopolitical tensions between China and the US, along with the importance of arms manufacturing to the UK economy, will prove too tricky to navigate. If China isn’t there, some discussion will likely happen but it will probably be inconclusive....