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World Leaders Plan New AI Agreement 05/21 06:06
World leaders are expected to adopt a new agreement on artificial
intelligence when they gather virtually Tuesday to discuss AI's potential risks
but also ways to promote its benefits and innovation.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- World leaders are expected to adopt a new
agreement on artificial intelligence when they gather virtually Tuesday to
discuss AI's potential risks but also ways to promote its benefits and
innovation.
The AI Seoul Summit is a follow-up to November's inaugural AI Safety Summit
at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom, where participating countries agreed
to work together to contain the potentially "catastrophic" risks posed by
galloping advances in AI.
The two-day meeting -- co-hosted by the South Korean and U.K. governments --
also comes as major tech companies like Meta, OpenAI and Google roll out the
latest versions of their AI models.
On Tuesday evening, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and British Prime
Minister Rishi Sunak are to meet other world leaders, industry leaders and
heads of international organizations for a virtual conference. The online
summit will be followed by an in-person meeting of digital ministers, experts
and others on Wednesday, according to organizers.
"It is just six months since world leaders met at Bletchley, but even in
this short space of time, the landscape of AI has changed dramatically," Yoon
and Sunak said in a joint article published in South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo
newspaper and the U.K.'s online inews site on Monday. "The pace of change will
only continue to accelerate, so our work must accelerate too."
While the U.K. meeting centered on AI safety issues, the agenda for this
week's gathering was expanded to also include "innovation and inclusivity,"
Wang Yun-jong, a deputy director of national security in South Korea, told
reporters Monday.
Wang said participants will subsequently "discuss not only the risks posed
by AI but also its positive aspects and how it can contribute to humanity in a
balanced manner."
The AI agreement will include the outcomes of discussions on safety,
innovation and inclusivity. according to Park Sang-wook, senior presidential
adviser for science and technology for President Yoon.
The leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies -- the U.S., Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Britain -- were invited to the virtual
summit, along with leaders of Australia and Singapore and representatives from
the U.N., the EU, OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon and Samsung, according to South
Korea's presidential office.
China doesn't plan to participate in the virtual summit though it will send
a representative to Wednesday's in-person meeting, the South Korean
presidential office said. China took part in the U.K. summit.
In their article, Yoon and Sunak said they plan to ask companies to do more
to show how they assess and respond to risks within their organizations.
"We know that, as with any new technology, AI brings new risks, including
deliberate misuse from those who mean to do us harm," they said. "However, with
new models being released almost every week, we are still learning where these
risks may emerge, and the best ways to manage them proportionately."
The Seoul meeting has been billed as a mini virtual summit, serving as an
interim meeting until a full-fledged in-person edition that France has pledged
to hold.
Governments around the world have been scrambling to formulate regulations
for AI even as the technology makes rapid advances and is poised to transform
many aspects of daily life, from education and the workplace to copyrights and
privacy. There are concerns that advances in AI could take away jobs, trick
people and spread disinformation.
Developers of the most powerful AI systems are also banding together to set
their own shared approach to setting AI safety standards. Facebook parent
company Meta Platforms and Amazon announced Monday they're joining the Frontier
Model Forum, a group founded last year by Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and
OpenAI.
In March, the U.N. General Assembly approved its first resolution on the
safe use of AI systems. Earlier in May, the U.S. and China held their first
high-level talks on artificial intelligence in Geneva to discuss how to address
the risks of the fast-evolving technology and set shared standards to manage it.
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