The AI Safety Summit, hosted by UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, has been criticised for a lack of diverse perspectives, focusing on the wrong problems and being dominated by powerful technology company executives
By Matthew Sparkes
1 November 2023
Digital ministers pose at the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park, UK
Leon Neal/Getty Images
The UK government’s AI Safety Summit, which claims to be “bringing together the world to discuss frontier AI”, has come under fire for a lack of diverse perspectives among its delegates, with critics dismissing it as little more than a photo opportunity.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak is hosting a group of 100 representatives from business, politics and academia at Bletchley Park on 1 and 2 November to discuss the risks of “frontier” AI models, defined as “highly capable general-purpose AI models that can perform a wide variety of tasks and match or exceed the capabilities present in today’s most advanced models”. But the government hasn’t publicly revealed the list of delegates and campaigners have criticised the narrow range of voices in attendance.
Mark Lee at the University of Birmingham, UK, says the summit is a stage-managed “photo opportunity” rather than a chance for open discourse, and that it is focusing on the wrong problems.
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“We need an open debate,” he says. “We want an interdisciplinary view of AI with people who are informed from a legal perspective, from an ethical perspective, from a technological perspective, rather than really quite powerful people from companies. I mean, they need to be in the room, but it can’t just be them.”
Lee says the summit seems to be focused on hypothetical existential risks like “robots with guns” rather than the real and pressing risks from AIs making biased decisions in medical diagnosis, criminal justice, finance and job applications. A wider variety of voices, with more diverse backgrounds, could point law-makers in a more practical direction when discussing regulation, he says.
More than 100 trade unions, charities and other groups signed an open letter to Sunak this week expressing their concerns about the lack of diversity at the event. They warn that the “communities and workers most affected by AI have been marginalised by the Summit”.