Summary
Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day:
Liz Truss has written to the prime minister to say she is “deeply disturbed” that China has been invited to next week’s AI safety summit at Bletchley Park. She said China views AI as “a means of state control and a tool for national security”. She is calling for the invitation be rescinded.
Rishi Sunak defended his decision to invite China but admitted that engaging with China on artificial intelligence may not be successful.
Artificial intelligence brings new dangers to society that must be addressed “head on”, the prime minister has warned. Rishi Sunak made the comments during his speech ahead of next week’s landmark global safety summit at Bletchley Park, where politicians and tech executives from around the world will discuss how the technology should be regulated.
Rishi Sunak said that the government would not “rush to regulate” AI. The prime minister also announced that the UK government was establishing the “world’s first” artificial intelligence safety institute.
A potential byelection in Peter Bone’s Wellingborough constituency is likely to be “challenging”, the deputy prime minister said. After MPs approved a six-week suspension against Bone for bullying and sexual misconduct against a staff member, a recall petition will be held, which will trigger a byelection if it is signed by 10% of voters in his Northamptonshire constituency.
Rishi Sunak said byelections are “always difficult for incumbent governments”, adding he was “confident” his government could lower taxes after inflation was “brought down”.
Rishi Sunak signalled he was “confident” his administration would be able to cut taxes before the next election. But the prime minister said it remained the “right economic policy” to focus on delivering his pledge of halving inflation by the end of the year
Boris Johnson’s pandemic-era chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, will give evidence to the Covid inquiry next week, alongside other senior officials from Number 10 during that period. The inquiry confirmed that Cummings will appear on 31 October.
The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has been accused of apparent plagiarism in her new book about female economists. An examination by the Financial Times of the book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, found more than 20 examples of passages from other sources that appear to be either lifted wholesale, or reworked with minor changes, without acknowledgment.
Parliament has been officially prorogued until 7 November for the start of the new parliamentary session and the king’s speech, which will set out the government’s future agenda, including legislative plans.
We are closing this liveblog shortly. Thanks so much for joining us.
Our blog on the Israel-Hamas war is still live:
Updated
A Green party candidate and his mother have been arrested on suspicion of stalking their local Conservative MP.
Chris Hallam, 48, and his mother, Christine, 76, former teachers from Buxton in Derbyshire, were arrested in September after Robert Largan, the MP for High Peak, accused them of harassing and stalking him.
They are now on bail and are banned from going within 50 metres of him and three members of his staff and within 5 metres of his office.
Chris Hallam stood for the Green party in the High Peak borough council elections in May and was beaten by one Labour party candidate and another from the Conservative party.
He is also High Peak’s Green party campaign coordinator, and he claims he cannot carry out his duties because of the stringent bail conditions imposed after his arrest.
The Hallams say their only crime was turning up to all of Largan’s constituency events after the MP blocked them on Facebook, and asking questions about local and national issues.
Largan reported the Hallams to the police in September after sending them a “cease and desist” letter on 7 July, which informed them that “your persistent actions over the last three months, including but not limited to attending constituency surgeries around High Peak after being specifically asked not to attend in person, and disrupting the surgeries by your aggressive behaviour, are unacceptable.”
The letter said the behaviour had continued “despite advice from Derbyshire police that you should not attend my surgeries in person”.
Ordering them to stop “all such activities” immediately, Largan wrote:
I believe your behaviour has caused harassment, alarm and distress to myself and my staff on a number of occasions.
Warning them that he may contact the police if they ignored the letter, he said they could raise issues with him regarding constituency matters only by writing a letter or emailing him.
Hallam admits that he and his mother ignored the letter and turned up to see Largan at a branch of Morrison’s supermarket in September. On arrival, he said, two police community support officers (PCSOs), as well as Morrison’s security guards, prevented them from speaking to the MP.
Read the full story here:
Updated
Parliament has been officially prorogued until 7 November for the start of the new parliamentary session and the king’s speech, which will set out the government’s future agenda, including legislative plans.
Updated
Rishi Sunak signalled he is “confident” his administration will be able to cut taxes before the next election.
But the prime minister said it remained the “right economic policy” to focus on delivering his pledge of halving inflation by the end of the year, PA Media reports.
The British leader included the commitment as one of his five promises to the electorate during a speech in January.
Sunak, speaking after his artificial intelligence address on Thursday, said:
As we bring inflation down, then is the time to look forward and of course I want to deliver a lower tax economy for the country.
And I’m confident that we will, but first we have to make sure that inflation is brought down.
There has been clamour from the right wing of his Conservative backbenches to introduce tax cuts before the nation goes to the polls to elect the next Westminster government.
A host of Tory MPs, including the former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, have signed-up to a pledge not to vote for chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement next month if it increases the overall tax burden on the UK.
A general election is due to be held before January 2025, with speculation over when Sunak will decide to go to the country.
Updated
Summary
Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day so far:
Liz Truss has written to the prime minister to say she is “deeply disturbed” that China has been invited to next week’s AI safety summit at Bletchley Park. She said China views AI as “a means of state control and a tool for national security”. She is calling for the invitation be rescinded.
Rishi Sunak defended his decision to invite China but admitted that engaging with China on artificial intelligence may not be successful.
Artificial intelligence brings new dangers to society that must be addressed “head on”, the prime minister has said. Rishi Sunak made the comments during his speech before next week’s landmark global safety summit at Bletchley Park, where politicians and tech executives from around the world will discuss how the technology should be regulated.
Rishi Sunak said the government would not “rush to regulate” AI. The prime minister also announced that the UK government was establishing the “world’s first” artificial intelligence safety institute.
A potential byelection in Peter Bone’s Wellingborough constituency is likely to be “challenging”, the deputy prime minister said. After MPs approved a six-week suspension of Bone for bullying and sexual misconduct against a staff member, a recall petition will be held, which will trigger a byelection if it is signed by 10% of voters in his Northamptonshire constituency.
Rishi Sunak said byelections are “always difficult for incumbent governments”, adding he was “confident” his government could lower taxes after inflation was “brought down”.
UK government ministers are to hold an emergency committee meeting as work intensifies to secure “pauses” in the conflict between Israel and Hamas after a tank raid on Gaza. Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, said he would chair a Cobra meeting with figures from the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence and Cabinet Office on Thursday morning.
Boris Johnson’s pandemic-era chief adviser Dominic Cummings will give evidence to the Covid inquiry next week, alongside other senior officials from Number 10 during that period. The inquiry confirmed that Cummings will appear on 31 October.
The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has been accused of apparent plagiarism in her new book about female economists. An examination by the Financial Times of the book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, found more than 20 examples of passages from other sources that appear to be either lifted wholesale, or reworked with minor changes, without acknowledgment.
Updated
Inviting China to AI summit a mistake, says Truss
Liz Truss has written to the prime minister to say she is “deeply disturbed” that China has been invited to next week’s AI safety summit at Bletchley Park.
She said China views AI as “a means of state control and a tool for national security”.
In a post on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, she said:
We should be working with our allies, not those seeking to subvert freedom and democracy.
She is calling for the invitation be rescinded.
China should not be invited to the UK's AI Summit at Bletchley Park.
— Liz Truss (@trussliz) October 26, 2023
We should be working with our allies, not those seeking to subvert freedom and democracy.
I have written to the Prime Minister requesting that the invitation be rescinded.👇 pic.twitter.com/tQDe2P3kak
Updated
Rishi Sunak has announced the establishment of a UK AI safety institute but has declined to support a moratorium on advanced development of the technology.
The prime minister said the institute would be a world first and would test new types of AI for a range of risks from generating misinformation to posing an existential threat.
Announcing the move before next week’s global summit on AI safety at Bletchley Park, Sunak said the institute would “advance the world’s knowledge of AI safety”.
in a speech at the Royal Society, an association of world-leading scientists, Sunak said:
It will carefully examine, evaluate, and test new types of AI so that we understand what each new model is capable of.
He said it would explore “all the risks, from social harms like bias and misinformation, through to the most extreme risks of all”. A prototype of the safety institute already exists in the UK’s frontier AI taskforce, which is scrutinising the safety of cutting-edge AI models and was established this year.
However, Sunak said a pause in developing powerful models was not feasible.
Asked after the speech if he would support a moratorium or ban on developing a highly capable form of AI known as artificial general intelligence, he said:
I don’t think it’s practical or enforceable. As a matter of principle, the UK has rightly been an economy and society that has encouraged innovation for all the good that it can bring. And I think that is the right approach.
The debate over AI safety reached a new peak in March when an open letter signed by thousands of prominent tech figures including Elon Musk called for an immediate pause in the creation of “giant” AIs for at least six months. It warned that AI labs were “locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control”.
A separate statement signed by tech executives in May, and referenced by Sunak on Thursday, referred to treating the extinction risks from AI development on a par with nuclear weapons and pandemics.
Read the full story here:
Updated
Humza Yousaf has asked one of Scotland’s senior legal officers to investigate complaints from the UK Covid inquiry that his government has failed to hand over WhatsApp messages and other social media discussions.
The first minister was challenged about the allegations by Douglas Ross, the Scottish Tory leader, during first minister’s questions on Thursday, after complaints earlier to the UK hearing by Jamie Dawson KC, a Scottish counsel to the inquiry.
Ross accused the Scottish government of refusing to comply with the inquiry’s request, which would cover text, Telegram and Signal app messages, made earlier this year.
Ross asked:
Where are the messages; where have they gone and has the Scottish government deleted any requests?
He said it emerged last year that the first minister and four other ministers did use WhatsApp to discuss government business. During heated exchanges with Yousaf, Ross added:
It would be a shocking display of secrecy; it would potentially break the law.
Yousaf retorted that unlike the UK government, his administration did not take decisions via WhatsApp. He insisted he, his ministers and his officials were aware of their legal duties to retain that information and that they were bound by a “do not destroy” policy.
Even so he said he had asked the solicitor general, Ruth Charteris KC, to investigate the inquiry’s complaints earlier this morning.
I can give an absolute assurance to those families listening, where we hold any relevant information that will be passed on.
Ross’s line of attack follows the controversy which enveloped the former prime minister Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and the UK government over their alleged failure to disclose messages to the UK Covid inquiry.
Aamer Anwar, the lead solicitor for the Scottish Covid Bereaved family group, said the disclosures at the UK hearing were “devastating”.
He said:
The families we represent deserve the truth. The Scottish Covid Bereaved find it inconceivable that the most senior figures in the Scottish government from former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, [deputy first minister] John Swinney, [finance secretary] Kate Forbes to the present first minister, Humza Yousaf, failed to retain their WhatsApp messages over the two-year period of the pandemic.
Updated
Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, has confirmed she will attend a landmark AI safety summit being held in the UK next week.
Rishi Sunak has invited world leaders – including from China – and tech bosses to Bletchley Park to discuss how the technology should be regulated.
Updated
The DUP leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, said “significant gaps” remain between his party and the government in talks over post-Brexit trading arrangements.
He joined other Northern Ireland party leaders in Belfast for a meeting with a delegation of US business leaders.
Donaldson said:
We meet regularly as party leaders and we have been doing that over the past number of months.
There is a lot of cooperation, a lot of talking between the parties, that has been going on for weeks in anticipation that at some stage, hopefully soon, we may be in a position to see a government formed.
But we are not there yet. There are still gaps to be closed, there are still issues that need to be resolved in our dialogue with the government, but we are working each and every week to resolve those issues.
I think that we have made progress, but there are still significant gaps in terms of what we need to ensure that the new arrangements which replace the Northern Ireland protocol work for Northern Ireland, that they enable us to trade with the rest of the United Kingdom in a way where those barriers created by the protocol have been removed in terms of the movement of goods from Northern Ireland to Great Britain, or Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
Updated
The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has been accused of apparent plagiarism in her new book about female economists.
An examination by the Financial Times of the book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, found more than 20 examples of passages from other sources that appear to be either lifted wholesale, or reworked with minor changes, without acknowledgment.
The examples cited by the paper include an obituary from the Guardian, several Wikipedia entries and a passage from a fellow Labour frontbencher.
The book’s publishers, Basic Books, admitted that sentences in the book were not properly referenced. Reeves’s office denied plagiarism but acknowledged that errors were made and said they would be corrected.
A spokesperson told the FT:
We strongly refute the accusation that has been put to us by this newspaper. These were inadvertent mistakes and will be rectified in future reprints.
Basic Books pointed out that the book includes a bibliography from more than 200 sources. It told the FT:
Where facts are taken from multiple sources, no author would be expected to reference each and every one.
Read the full story here:
Rishi Sunak visited the Moorfields eye hospital in central London ahead of his speech on AI.
He was shown a retinal scan procedure, which makes use of the new technology, by Dr Siegfried Wagner and Dr Xiao Liu.
Updated
Peter Kyle, the shadow science secretary, has urged Rishi Sunak to “back up his words” following his speech addressing the “dangers and fears” around artificial intelligence.
He told Sky News:
Artificial intelligence is already having huge benefits for Britain, and the potential of this next generation of AI could be endless, but it poses risks as well.
Safety must come first to prevent this technology getting out of control.
Rishi Sunak should back up his words with action and publish the next steps on how we can ensure the public is protected.
We are still yet to see concrete proposals on how the government is going to regulate the most powerful AI models.
A Labour government would set clear standards for AI safety, so that this leading tech can be used to restore our public services and boost growth.
UK government ministers are to hold an emergency committee meeting as work intensifies to secure “pauses” in the conflict between Israel and Hamas after a tank raid of Gaza.
Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, said he would chair a Cobra meeting with figures from the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence and Cabinet Office on Thursday morning.
He said there had been “some success” in delivering aid to civilians in Gaza who were lacking food, water or medicines, but that international negotiations were continuing, to try to reach those still in need.
The UK was pushing for specific pauses in fighting, which would be time and location specific to allow aid agencies to deliver items such as water filters and medical kits, he said. Britain has resisted calls for a total ceasefire.
Dowden told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
The reason why we don’t support a wider ceasefire is one just has to understand the position of people in Israel. If it had been the case in the UK that a group of terrorists had entered and indiscriminately sought to murder over 1,000 people, there would be demands that we remove this threat.
And it is perfectly legitimate for the Israeli government, in exercise of its self-defence, to remove the threat to its people, whilst, of course, respecting international law, as we have made the case to the Israelis and to others.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza is increasingly dire. A Red Cross mission has described scenes of chaos and exhaustion in the face of the total blockade by Israel, a critical fuel shortage and relentless bombing.
Read the full story here:
Boris Johnson’s pandemic-era chief adviser Dominic Cummings will give evidence to the Covid inquiry next week, alongside other senior officials from Number 10 during that period.
The inquiry confirmed that Cummings will appear on October 31, PA News reports.
Martin Reynolds, the former principal private secretary to Johnson when he was prime minister, will give evidence on October 30, as will former Number 10 director of communications Lee Cain.
Sunak unclear if China will accept his invitation to UK AI summit
Engaging with China on artificial intelligence may not be successful, the prime minister has admitted.
Rishi Sunak, speaking during a Q&A about the UK’s decision to invite Beijing to its AI safety summit, said:
I can’t say with 100% certainty that China will be there.
But I do believe that it is absolutely the right thing to have invited them.
China is unquestionably the world’s second AI power behind the US. That is just a fact when you look at the amount of research investment and activity that is happening there.
He added:
That doesn’t mean that it is going to be successful, it doesn’t mean you’re going to agree on everything.
But you should certainly try and engage with them because for a proper solution to AI over time, it is going to require an international solution. Whether China attends is obviously up to them.
Updated
Rishi Sunak said byelections are “always difficult for incumbent governments”, adding he was “confident” his government could lower taxes after inflation was “brought down”.
Answering a question about a prospective byelection in Peter Bone’s Wellingborough seat, the prime minister said after his AI speech:
I think there is lots of things in byelections which are always difficult for incumbent governments – I talked about that the other week, and we are just going to carry on delivering for the country.
When it comes to taxes, I’ve always been clear that of course I want to cut people’s taxes – I’m a Conservative, I believe in doing that.
But the priority when I became prime minister, it was to bring inflation down. And as I said then, the biggest tax cut we can deliver for the country is to halve inflation because it is inflation that makes people poorer, pushes up the prices of things, eats into your savings.
And that is very much following in the tradition of Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson, and I believe that is the right economic policy.
And as I said, as we bring inflation down, then is the time to look forward and of course I want to deliver a lower tax economy for the country.
And I’m confident that we will, but first we have to make sure that inflation is brought down.
Updated
Prime minister Rishi Sunak said the world looks to the UK as providing an example on issues such as technology regulation.
He told reporters:
We as a country tend to get this right.
We tend to take a principles-based, proportionate approach to regulation that protects the things that we need to protect, whilst allowing the maximum amount of innovation to happen here.
That is the hallmark of the UK.
Updated
The UK cannot “put our heads in the sand” when it comes to the risks posed by AI, Rishi Sunak said.
Taking questions after his speech, the prime minister said:
We already invest far more in AI safety research than any other country in the world, that is what our taskforce ... is doing.
There is debate about whether these risks will manifest at all and indeed over what timeframe, and you can see that debate in the community of AI experts and researchers.
But my view is that even if there is uncertainty, the risk could be potentially significant, so it is right that we take all the steps necessary to protect people and keep them safe, and that is what we will continue to do.
He said the new institute and next week’s safety summit was an example of how he wanted to keep the public safe.
Sunak continued:
What we can’t do is just put our heads in the sand and think this can either be ignored or will stop happening.
It is not going to stop – AI doesn’t respect borders, so what the right approach is for us is to be ahead of it in developing the expertise and capabilities to understand the risks and then mitigate against them.
Updated
Rishi Sunak said it was too simplistic to say artificial intelligence would “automate and take people’s jobs”, but admitted that all new technologies have an impact on the labour market.
Taking questions after his speech in London, he said:
I think also it’s important to recognise that AI doesn’t just automate and take people’s jobs.
A better way to think about it is as a co-pilot,” he said, giving an example of welfare case workers using AI to help them in their day-to-day tasks.
As with all technologies, they change our labour market. I think over time of course they make our economy more prosperous, more productive.
They create more growth overall but it does mean that there are changes in the labour market.
He said that the best thing the government can do is offer a “world-class education”, which Sunak said he was aiming to achieve.
It’s hard to predict the exact evolution of everyone’s job, and what we can do in government is make sure that we have a world-class education system.
That is the best way that I can ensure that everyone in our country benefits from not just AI, but everything that comes our way.
Updated
The prime minister defended inviting China to next week’s AI safety summit.
Rishi Sunak told an audience in central London:
We’re bringing together the world’s leading representatives, from civil society to the companies pioneering AI and the countries most advanced in using it.
And yes, we’ve invited China.
I know there are some who will say they should have been excluded but there can be no serious strategy for AI without at least trying to engage all of the world’s leading AI powers.
That might not have been the easy thing to do but it was the right thing to do.
The Ukrainian embassy in the UK has thanked the Welsh parliament for recognising the Holodomor in Ukraine in the 1930s as genocide.
Members of the Senedd backed a motion describing the Holodomor as an “act of genocide” and “a predetermined crime committed and led by Stalin and the Soviet government against the people of Ukraine”.
Alun Davies, who proposed the motion, told the Senedd:
The Holodomor is a Ukrainian word that means to inflict death by hunger. Let us be in no doubt ... this was genocide …
It was a deliberate policy designed to eliminate the Ukrainian rural population, who were the embodiment and spirit of Ukrainian culture and nationhood.
Mick Antoniw, Wales’ counsel general – the government’s law officer, said:
The Holodomor was an act of genocide.
The Senedd has gone further than the House of Commons in the UK, which agreed a motion earlier this year in which it said it “believes” the Holdomor was a genocide. The UK government says it is matter for a “competent court” rather than a government to make a judgment on what constitutes genocide.
Posting on X, formerly Twitter, the Ukrainian embassy said it was grateful to the Senedd. “It’s a significant milestone in restoring historical justice and raising awareness about the millions of innocent victims!”
We are grateful to @SeneddWales @counselgenwales for recognizing the 1932–1933 Holodomor in Ukraine as genocide committed against Ukrainians. It’s a significant milestone in restoring historical justice and raising awareness about the millions of innocent victims! pic.twitter.com/LG2hXn3xXQ
— Embassy of Ukraine to the UK (@UkrEmbLondon) October 25, 2023
Updated
Oliver Dowden has suggested byelection swings are not usually replicated at general elections.
It follows heavy Conservative losses in last week’s Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire byelections and the prospect of another contest in Wellingborough after Peter Bone was suspended from the Commons.
Asked on LBC radio whether he was nervous about his 21,000 majority in his own Hertsmere constituency, the deputy prime minister said:
You name a byelection swing that has taken place 18 months to a year before an election that has been replicated in that general election – you know that is not going to be the case.
He said it was “jumping ahead” to suggest there would be a byelection in Bone’s seat, with it dependent on the results of a recall petition.
Updated
Byelection for Peter Bone's seat would be 'challenging' for Tories - Dowden
A potential byelection in Peter Bone’s Wellingborough constituency is likely to be “challenging”, the deputy prime minister said.
After MPs approved a six-week suspension against Bone for bullying and sexual misconduct against a staff member, a recall petition will be held which will trigger a byelection if it is signed by 10% of voters in his Northamptonshire constituency.
Bone has held the seat for the Conservatives since 2005 and retained it at the last general election with a majority of 18,540.
Oliver Dowden, asked whether the Tories were concerned about the prospect of another byelection, told Sky News:
Parliament has spoken on this issue last night and I believe that Peter Bone is subject to a six-week suspension and there are further steps, so we are not in a situation right now that there is going to be a byelection.
That is up to the people of Peter Bone’s constituency, and of course any byelection for a government that has been in power for 13 years is always going to be challenging.
But if there is a byelection, and it is a very big ‘if’, then we will go out and make our case.
Asked whether the government thought it would be defeated, Dowden replied:
I’m not saying we are going to lose it at all – I’m saying that we will go out there and make our case very robustly.
Updated
Rishi Sunak said in his speech on AI and emerging technology that the government is “investing almost £1bn in a supercomputer thousands of times faster than the one you have at home”.
Updated
Rishi Sunak said the work of the UK’s new AI safety institute will be made available to the world.
The prime minister said:
We will make the work of our AI safety institute available to the world.
That’s the right thing to do morally in keeping with the UK’s historic role on the international stage, but it’s also the right thing economically, for families and businesses up and down the country.
He said this would help to attract jobs and investment that will come from the new wave of technology, boosting growth.
UK to establish AI safety institute, says Sunak
Rishi Sunak announced that the UK government was establishing the “world’s first” artificial intelligence safety institute.
The prime minister said during a speech in central London:
I can announce that we will establish the world’s first AI safety institute right here in the UK.
It will advance the world’s knowledge of AI safety and it will carefully examine, evaluate and test new types of AI so we understand what each new model is capable of, exploring all the risks from social harms like bias and misinformation, through to the most extreme risks of all.
The British people should have peace of mind that we’re developing the most advanced protections for AI of any country in the world, doing what is right and what is necessary to keep you safe.
Updated
UK will not rush to regulate AI, says Sunak
Rishi Sunak said that the government would not “rush to regulate” AI.
He said that states should not rely on private companies “marking their own homework, as many of those working on this would themselves agree, not least because only governments can properly assess the risks of national security”.
He continued:
And only nation states have the power and legitimacy to keep their people safe.
The UK’s answer is not to rush to regulate. This is a point of principle.
We believe in innovation. It’s a hallmark of the British economy, so we will always have a presumption to encourage it, not to stifle it.
And in any case, how can we write laws that make sense for something that we don’t yet fully understand?
Updated
Rishi Sunak said he wanted to be “honest” with the public about the risks of AI, as he gave a speech about the emerging technology in central London.
As the government published new assessments on artificial intelligence, he said they offered a “stark warning”.
Get this wrong and it could make it easier to build chemical or biological weapons. Terrorist groups could use AI to spread fear and disruption on an even greater scale.
Criminals could exploit AI for cyber-attacks, disinformation, fraud or even child sexual abuse.
And in the most unlikely but extreme cases, there is even the risk that humanity could lose control of AI completely through the kind of AI sometimes referred to as ‘super intelligence’.
But he said that it was “not a risk that people need to be losing sleep over right now” and he did not want to be “alarmist”.
Updated
Artificial intelligence brings new dangers to society that must be addressed “head on”, the prime minister will warn on Thursday, as the government admitted it could not rule out the technology posing an existential threat.
Rishi Sunak will make the comments during his speech ahead of next week’s landmark global safety summit at Bletchley Park, the home of Britain’s second world war codebreakers, where politicians and tech executives from around the world will discuss how the technology should be regulated.
The prime minister will refer to the “new opportunities” for economic growth offered by powerful AI systems but will also acknowledge they bring “new dangers”, including risks of cybercrime, designing of bioweapons, disinformation and upheaval to jobs.
The government has also published a first-of-its-kind paper into AI’s capabilities and risks. The document outlines a number of alarming scenarios for the development of AI but says that many experts consider the risk to be very low.
Sunak will say:
The responsible thing for me to do is to address those fears head on, giving you the peace of mind that we will keep you safe, while making sure you and your children have all the opportunities for a better future that AI can bring.
Doing the right thing, not the easy thing, means being honest with people about the risks from these technologies.
Read more here:
Welcome to today’s liveblog. I’m Nicola Slawson and I’m covering for Andrew Sparrow today. Do drop me a line if you have any questions or comments. I’m on nicola.slawson@theguardian.com or @Nicola_Slawson on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
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