Speaking at the end of the UK’s AI Safety Summit, prime minister Rishi Sunak said that we don’t yet understand enough about AI models to regulate them properly, but work to do so must happen faster
By Matthew Sparkes
2 November 2023
UK prime minister Rishi Sunak at the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park on 2 November
Justin Tallis/WPA Pool/Getty Images
Artificial intelligence models must be better understood and subject to testing before any mandatory legislation to oversee the industry can be introduced, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak told the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park – but he also said that such efforts must be accelerated.
Sunak announced the establishment of a UK AI Safety Institute last week that will engage with technology companies on a voluntary basis to ensure that their models are safe to roll out to the public. But the body won’t have official regulatory powers and companies won’t be compelled to submit to whatever testing protocols they set up.
In a press conference that marked the end of the summit, Sunak said that regulation will ultimately be needed, but should be based on evidence. Large technology companies working on AI, including Meta, Google DeepMind and OpenAI, have agreed to engage with the new organisation, he said.
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“We now have the agreement we need to go and do the testing before the models are released to the public,” said Sunak. “What we can’t do is expect companies to mark their own homework.”
Sunak said that regulation “takes time, and we need to move faster”, adding that more information on AI must be gathered before effective regulation can be written.