China, the United States, the European Union (EU), Canada and around twenty countries signed the Bletchley declaration for the “safe” development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the United Kingdom on Wednesday. of the first international summit on the meteoric rise of this technology.
“This historic declaration marks the start of a new global effort to build public trust in AI by ensuring it is safe,” said British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on X (ex- Twitter).
The European Union and the 28 countries meeting in Bletchley Park, north London, agreed on “the urgent need to collectively understand and manage the potential risks” of AI through “a new global effort aimed at to ensure that AI is developed and deployed in a safe and responsible manner.”
Faced with the growing potential of models like ChatGPT, Bletchley’s declaration “shows that for the first time, the world is coming together to identify the problem and highlight its opportunities,” said British Minister of Technology, Michelle Donelan, at the ‘AFP.
This meeting “is not intended to lay the foundations for global legislation, it must serve to chart a path forward,” she clarified.
Summits and institutes
Two international summits on AI will follow, in South Korea in six months then in France in a year, she added from the emblematic code-breaking center from the Second World War.
For two days, political leaders, AI experts and tech giants gathered there at the initiative of the United Kingdom, which wants to take the lead in global cooperation on this technology.
At the same time, the American Vice-President, Kamala Harris, is to announce in a speech in London the creation of an institute on the security of artificial intelligence in Washington.
Such a structure – similar to the one that the United Kingdom has also announced to establish – would bring together experts responsible for establishing “guidelines” and evaluating the most advanced AI models to “identify and mitigate” risks, according to the White House.
Generative AI, capable of producing text, sounds or images upon simple request in a matter of seconds, has made exponential progress in recent years and the next generations of these models will appear by summer.
They raise immense hopes for medicine or education, but could also destabilize societies, make it possible to manufacture weapons or escape human control, the British government has warned.
” Behind closed doors “
After this first day dedicated to the potential dangers of the most advanced AI, high-level political representatives are expected at Bletchley Park on Thursday.
Among them, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, and the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni – the only G7 head of state to make the trip.
The United Kingdom hopes to convince them to create a group of experts on AI based on the IPCC model for the climate.
American billionaire and star entrepreneur Elon Musk, already present at the summit on Wednesday, will speak with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday evening.
In an open letter published Tuesday, several of the “founding fathers” of this technology such as Montrealer Yoshua Bengio or Geoffrey Hinton pleaded for “the development and ratification of an international treaty on AI”, in order to reduce the risks “potentially catastrophic consequences that advanced systems pose to humanity”.
The challenge is to be able to define safeguards without hindering innovation for AI laboratories and tech giants. The EU and US, unlike the UK, have chosen the regulatory route.
Last week, several companies such as OpenAI, Meta (Facebook) and DeepMind (Google) agreed to make public some of their AI security rules at the request of the United Kingdom.
In an open letter addressed to Rishi Sunak, around a hundred international organizations, experts and activists deplored that this summit was being held “behind closed doors”, dominated by tech giants and with limited access for civil society.