Michelle Donelan, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, said today that Britain could host its imminent Artificial Intelligence (AI) Safety Summit as often as every six months.
“This summit is just the beginning of the journey,” she told an audience of tech startups, industry leaders and insiders at the Bloomberg Tech Summit.
“[The government is] having a conversation on whether this is going to be an annual event. It may be that we set it up every year or every six months,” Donelan said.
The AI Safety Summit, set to go ahead next Wednesday and Thursday at Bletchley Park, will gather world leaders and top tech companies to have a discussion about how to regulate AI. The invitation list has not been made public.
Donelan said it differs from anything that has happened before because it will focus on the most cutting-edge systems in existence or development, known as ‘frontier models.’
Although Donelan said the UK is already a leader in global AI safety, the tech community in attendance did not necessarily agree.
According to a poll of those in attendance of her speech, over half of the audience answered ‘no’ to the question: “Can the UK lead the world in developing and regulating artificial intelligence?”
Only 34 per cent said ‘yes’, while 13 per cent said ‘maybe’.
Following the results of the poll, Donelan said: “Oh no, we’re already leading in global safety.” The audience laughed in response.
The audience was similarly pessimistic about the UK’s capital markets.
In response to a question in the following session: “You’re ready to IPO, where do you list?” only 22 per cent of startups in the audience picked London, while the remaining 78 per cent picked New York.
Donelan, who has been vocal on the issue of scaling and keeping startups in the UK, said it is “one of [her] key priorities”.
“We’ve already started to do a great deal of work on this, like the Mansion House reforms that were announced by the Chancellor.
“But we need to do more and that’s why I’ve been working with TechUK and other partners… and we will be coming up with further initiatives in this space.”
