UK to lead international discussion on AI safety in San Franciso days after US election

The UK will host a follow-up to the AI summit in San Francisco in November in a bid to boost AI safety worldwide.

The two-day event will gather AI developers from across the world to ensure they stick to commitments made in Seoul early this year.

In May, 16 companies including Amazon, Google, Meta, and IBM, signed up to a Frontier AI safety charter, where they pledged to stop developing AI models if the risks could not be “sufficiently mitigated”. The cohort also committed to publishing their latest AI safety standards before the next summit.

Technology secretary Peter Kyle said: “The conference is a clear sign of the UK’s ambition to further the shared global mission to design practical and effective approaches to AI safety. 

“We’re just months away from the AI Action Summit, and the discussions in San Francisco will give companies a clear focus on where and how they can bolster their AI safety plans building on the commitments they made in Seoul.”

The event will run from 21-22 November, around two weeks after American head to the polls, and aims to provide a “deeper understanding” of how companies are putting their “commitment into practice”, the government has said.

Researchers and policymakers will discuss how to accelerate progress on safety frameworks, ahead of France’s AI Action Summit, set to take place February next year.

It will be co-hosted by the Centre for the Governance of AI and led by the UK’s AI Safety Institute (AISI), which earlier this year opened an office in San Francisco.

The announcement comes after the US Government announced yesterday it would host he first meeting of the International Network of AI Safety Institutes, also in San Francisco. Taking place before the conference, the event will work to align priorities across the international network.

The conference will also come a year after the UK hosted the first-ever global summit on AI safety, which saw 28 countries sign the first-ever international declaration on AI.