Total of 28 countries, including India, USA, China, EU adopt declaration on safe use of AI
The declaration states that countries will focus on “identifying AI safety risks of shared concern, building a shared scientific and evidence-based understanding of these risks”
As many as 28 countries taking part in the first international AI Safety Summit being held in the UK have agreed on the Bletchley Declaration on the development of artificial intelligence (AI); the document was distributed by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office.
“Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents enormous global opportunities: it has the potential to transform and enhance human wellbeing, peace and prosperity. To realize this, we affirm that, for the good of all, AI should be designed, developed, deployed, and used, in a manner that is safe, in such a way as to be human-centric, trustworthy and responsible,” the document reads. Meanwhile, the declaration recognizes that along with these benefits, AI “poses significant risks, including in those domains of daily life.”
“To that end, we welcome relevant international efforts to examine and address the potential impact of AI systems in existing fora and other relevant initiatives, and the recognition that the protection of human rights, transparency and explainability, fairness, accountability, regulation, safety, appropriate human oversight, ethics, bias mitigation, privacy and data protection needs to be addressed,” the declaration notes.
Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the EU, the Netherlands, Turkey, the UAE, Ukraine, and the US signed the document.
The declaration states that countries will focus on “identifying AI safety risks of shared concern, building a shared scientific and evidence-based understanding of these risks.” Furthermore, the parties intend to work together to develop national AI strategies, recognizing that these “approaches may differ.” The signatories also favored transparency in AI developments by private companies and expressed their intention to cooperate with each other on AI issues as well as encourage international research projects in this field.
Sunak believes that “this is a landmark achievement that sees the world’s greatest AI powers agree on the urgency behind understanding the risks of AI – helping ensure the long-term future of our children and grandchildren.”
Bletchley Park Summit
The first international AI Safety Summit is being held on November 1-2 at the Bletchley Park Estate on the outskirts of the English town of Milton Keynes, about 70 kilometers northwest of London.
The Government Code & Cypher School (GC&CS) was located there during World War II. The team that included famous mathematician Alan Turing, who cracked the code of the Nazi encryption machine Enigma, worked there.
About 100 prominent experts and dignitaries, including US Vice President Kamala Harris, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, were invited to attend the summit. Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX, Tesla and social network X (formerly Twitter), Microsoft President Brad Smith, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, and Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, the company that developed the popular chatbot ChatGPT, were also invited.
