The Guttenberg galaxy and the world of printing were born in Mainz (Germany); the industrial revolution, in the textile mills of Manchester; the atomic bomb, in the desert of New Mexico, courtesy of Robert Oppenheimer, and the computer has almost as many parents as there are elite universities in the United States, from Pennsylvania to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Now Washington, the EU and Britain are vying for leadership in regulating the next big technological leap in human history, artificial intelligence.
The main takeaway from the AI summit held over the past two days at Bletchley Park (a highly symbolic setting because Nazi codes were cracked there in World War II) is not so much a theoretical willingness to cooperate as the invention is not overdone (subscribed in a ceclaration), like the battle to decide who has the singing voice.
They all take positions to leave their mark and get the initiative. The American president, Joe Biden, signed an executive order a few days ago that basically obliges high tech companies to provide the Government with all relevant information about the new software systems they develop in AI; The EU is preparing its own artificial intelligence law, more invasive, which will allow draconian measures and the closure of services that, from Brussels, are considered to be "harmful to society", and the Kingdom Unit aims to act as a kind of global mediator of the regulatory process, and thus demonstrate (which is not entirely clear) that it remains relevant in geopolitics despite Brexit, and that it has become something similar to floating icebergs in the Atlantic, between North America and the European continent.
For these purposes, the British conservative leader, Rishi Sunak, organized the Bletchley Park summit, attended by a hundred academics, scientists and businessmen, as well as representatives of thirty countries. Yesterday, in a diplomatic marathon, he held bilateral meetings with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen; the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres. The day before he had met with the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris. The gesture of delivering the speech at the American embassy in London (instead of delivering it at the meeting) did not go down well with Downing Street. Competition stuff.
“AI offers enormous opportunities, but it also carries risks, and we need to act quickly to confront them, given the speed with which technology is advancing (another version of ChatGPT, a hundred times more powerful, is expected in a year) – pointed out Sunak at the closing of the summit. But the alarm should not be spread, because we have the necessary tools to achieve this". The UK is in favor of less strict regulation than the EU has planned, and says Brexit gives it the freedom it needs to be a global leader on the issue.
Everyone agrees that AI needs to be regulated, but the question is to what extent. "What cannot be is that the companies in the sector correct their exams", said Sunak. But ex-Liberal deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, who left politics to become president of global affairs at Meta (a spectacular blunder), led the campaign at Bletchley Park to limit government intrusion (he had no shortage of allies ), with the argument that "the capacity of AI should not be exaggerated".
When asked at the press conference about one of the big concerns, whether robots will perform many of the functions that people do today, Sunak was optimistic: "We have to see AI more as a co-pilot that will help us to steer the ship rather than as an enemy who will steal our jobs and the way we earn our living. Some sectors will benefit from it, and others will be harmed, as is the case with all technological innovations, but for now it has already created ten thousand jobs, and it will create many millions more”. Not all participants in the summit shared this rosy, happy ending movie vision.
Powers are fighting over who sets the pace and sets the content of the inevitable AI regulation, and high tech companies (xAI, Meta, Anthropic, Google's Deep Mind, Open AI...) are asking to self-regulate- se, as the banks did before the financial collapse of 2008 (“trust us”), from which the economy has not yet recovered. Perhaps with the future of humanity at stake it's a lesson that needs to be heeded a bit.
