Ahead of the AI Safety Summit starting tomorrow morning and taking place outside London at Bletchley Park, the UK government has today confirmed more details about who will actually attend the event. The publication of the list comes after weeks of speculation and criticism that the event’s line-up – both in terms of topics and attendees – would not be sufficient to fully reflect the different stakeholders and issues involved to play.
Organizers have said some of the key discussion topics will include the idea of catastrophic risk in AI; how to identify and respond to it; and establishing an agreed concept of “cross-border AI”.
Depending on how close you think these risks are to reality, some ideas may seem more abstract, and less about some of the more specific and pressing concerns people have expressed about the role AI currently plays, for example in advancing of disinformation. or lending a helping hand to malicious hackers looking for ways to break into networks.
As we wrote yesterday, Britain is using this event – the first of its kind, as it has indicated – in part to carve out a territory for itself on the AI map – as well as a place to build AI companies to build, but also as an authority in the entire field.
That, combined with the fact that the topics and approach are focused on potential issues, makes the affair feel like one grand photo opportunity and PR exercise, a way for the government to show off itself in the most positive way while at the same time dropping in the polls and is also facing a disastrously poor investigation into its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. On the other side Great Britain do have the qualifications for a seat at the table, so if the government plays a hand in this, it can do so because its cards are strong.
The subsequent guest list predictably leans more towards organizations and visitors from Great Britain. It’s also almost as revealing to see who that is not Participate.
The 46 academic and social institutions include national universities such as Oxford and Birmingham (but not Cambridge); in addition to international institutions such as Stanford and several other US universities (but not some you might have expected, such as MIT); The Chinese Academy of Sciences will be present. Groups such as the Alan Turing Institute, the Ada Lovelace Institute, the Mozilla Foundation and the Rand Corporation will also be in attendance.
Participating countries include the US (represented by Vice President Kamala Harris); a number of European countries (but curiously none from the Scandinavian countries); Ukraine, but not Russia (yes, there are sanctions for it, but that doesn’t stop individuals from the country from participating in sports, and AI academics are in fact athletes of a different breed). Brazil is the only representative of Latin America among a small number of countries from the Global South.
The 40 companies include several major players like Google, Meta, Microsoft and Salesforce, but not Apple or Amazon (AWS will be there, though); Elon Musk’s OpenAI and X AI will also be there; players from the processor world from ARM, Nvidia and Graphcore, among others, are participating; together with a number of startups. And it will also include a handful of multilateral organizations, including the United Nations and some of its agencies.