UK’s AI Safety Summit is dominated by Big Tech, a missed opportunity

Meta, OpenAI and Google are some of the companies attending PM Rishi Sunak’s summit on the risks and misuses of artificial intelligence. We the people need a voice, when Big Tech and its big money is calling all the shots and controlling all the politicians in the room, humanity loses.

• More than 100 UK and international organizations, experts and campaigners sign open letter to Rishi Sunak. The list of signatories and the open letter can be found here: https://ai-summit-open-letter.info/
• Groups warn that the “communities and workers most affected by AI have been marginalized by the Summit.”
• ‘Closed door’ event is dominated by Big Tech and overly focused on speculative risks instead of AI threats “in the here and now”

Highlighting the exclusion of civil society from the Summit, the letter says:?

• Your ‘Global Summit on AI Safety’ seeks to tackle the transformational risks and benefits of AI, acknowledging that AI “will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. Yet the communities and workers most affected by AI have been marginalized by the Summit
• “The government has bungled what could have been an opportunity for real global AI leadership due to the Summit’s limited scope and invitees. The agenda’s focus on future, apocalyptic risks belies the fact that government bodies and institutions in the UK are already deploying AI and automated decision-making in ways that are exposing citizens to error and bias on a massive scale.

From an applied intelligence perspective, Governance mechanisms, including binding ones such as laws and treaties, will be essential for mitigating the risks AI poses to core pillars of our society. With the most powerful AI systems currently in the hands of a few private companies, we need to satisfactorily answer questions such as: Who decides how powerful AI will be used? How do we determine what is safe for the public and our democracy? How is the resulting wealth shared?