We are still well and truly in the AI hype phase, with most companies now citing AI as an important part of their future even if their business has only started looking at AI in the past 3 months. The future benefits of AI at this stage are hard to quantify, as are the potential downsides that this very powerful new technology brings.

But those downsides are very much under discussion because they could undermine many things that we have come to assume as human beings. Notable is the fact that the AI tech owners and luminaries are the people who are making the most noise about the area needing to be regulated (oh the irony!).

Recently Global Industry and Political leaders got together do discuss how the regulation of AI should be addressed. The Global AI summit was a two day event which took place on the 1st and 2nd November 2023 at Bletchley Park in the UK (the historic site of British codebreaking during WWII and the home of computing). Over 50 countries were represented at the summit including political leaders and industry leaders such as Elon Musk.

The main summit objectives were to:

• Consider the risks of AI, especially at the frontier of development
• Discuss how risks can be mitigated through internationally coordinated action
• Boost transparency and accountability in the AI industry
• Promote ethical and responsible use of AI for social good

The summit was deemed a success and a landmark event for the global AI community. It was deemed a good starting point for continued cooperation in the area of all things Artificial Intelligence and a significant step towards fostering a safer and more beneficial future for humanity and AI.

The key outcomes of the summit were:

1. The Bletchley Declaration - a joint statement signed by all participating countries, which reaffirmed their commitment to ensuring the safety and trustworthiness of AI systems and outlined a set of principles and actions to guide future cooperation
2. The launch of a new AI Safety Institued: a global research centre based in the UK, which will conduct leading-edge research on AI safety/governance and provide training and education for AI practitioners and policymakers
3. The publication of company safety policies by the top AI firms such as OpenAI, Deepmind and Microsoft, which revealed their internal processes and standards for ensuring the safety and reliability of AI products and services
4. A discussion paper on the capabilities and risks of frontier AI, which provided an overview of the current state of the art and the potential challenges and opportunities of fast advancing AI technologies

The difficult part now begins: how to ensure that these good intentions are met within commercial businesses which are all competing to become the leader in their field.