The AI Safety Summit 2023 was an international conference on the safety and regulation of artificial intelligence. Organized by the British government, it was held in November 2023 at Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes, England. The event was the first ever global summit on artificial intelligence. The summit led to the release of the Bletchley Declaration, which focused on identifying AI safety risks of shared concern and building respective risk-based policies to ensure that the benefits of the technology can be harnessed responsibly for good and for all.
The conference brought together government representatives, technology executives, and researchers from 28 countries, including the United States, China, Australia, and the European Union. It marked a significant step in international efforts to address the challenges posed by advanced artificial intelligence systems.
Background
The prime minister of the United Kingdom at the time, Rishi Sunak, made AI one of the priorities of his government, announcing that the UK would host a global AI Safety conference in autumn 2023. The announcement came amid growing concerns about the rapid development of large language models and other generative AI technologies, which had seen significant advances in the preceding years.
The summit was part of a broader international conversation about AI governance. In the months leading up to the event, various governments and organizations had begun to propose frameworks for managing the risks associated with increasingly capable AI systems.
Venue
Bletchley Park was a World War II codebreaking facility established by the British government on the site of a Victorian manor and is in the British city of Milton Keynes. It has played an important role in the history of computing, with some of the first modern computers being built at the facility. The choice of venue was symbolic, connecting the historical importance of codebreaking and early computing to contemporary discussions about AI safety.
The facility was the site of significant wartime intelligence work, including the breaking of the Enigma code. Its selection for the summit highlighted the UK's historical contributions to computing and cryptography.
Outcomes
28 countries at the summit, including the United States, China, Australia, and the European Union, issued an agreement known as the Bletchley Declaration, calling for international co-operation to manage the challenges and risks of artificial intelligence. The Bletchley Declaration affirms that AI should be designed, developed, deployed, and used in a manner that is safe, human-centric, trustworthy and responsible.
Emphasis was placed on regulating "Frontier AI", a term for the latest and most powerful AI systems. Concerns raised at the summit included the potential use of AI for terrorism, criminal activity, and warfare, as well as existential risk posed to humanity as a whole.
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, signed an executive order requiring AI developers to share safety results with the US government. The US government also announced the creation of an American AI Safety Institute, as part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
The tech entrepreneur Elon Musk and Sunak did a live interview on AI safety on 2 November on X.
Notable attendees
The following individuals attended the summit:
- Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States
- Charles III, King of the United Kingdom (attending virtually)
- Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, owner of X, SpaceX, Neuralink, and xAI
- Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy
- Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission
- Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI
- Nick Clegg, former British politician and president of global affairs at Meta Platforms
- Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind
- Michelle Donelan, UK secretary of state for Science, Innovation and Technology
- Věra Jourová, the European Commission's vice-president for Values and Transparency
- Gina Raimondo, United States secretary of commerce
- Wu Zhaohui, Chinese vice-minister of science and technology
The presence of high-level officials from major AI powers, including the United States and China, underscored the global significance of the event.
Global AI Summit series
The 2023 summit initiated a series of international meetings on AI safety. The event established a framework for ongoing dialogue among nations on how to address the risks and opportunities presented by advanced AI technologies. The Bletchley Declaration served as a foundational document for subsequent discussions in this series.