Rishi Sunak Says Risk to UK From AI is on Same Scale as Threat of Nuclear War

Four X accounts apparently generated by artificial intelligence software, displayed on a laptop in Helsinki on June 12, 2023. Olivier Morin/AFP

The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has compared the risk to mankind from artificial intelligence (AI) as being on a par with nuclear war or another global pandemic.

But as he arrived for the second day of the AI safety summit at Bletchley Park—the former home of the Enigma codebreakers in World War Two—he said it was important not to be “alarmist.”

On Wednesday, 28 countries and the European Union signed a joint agreement called the Bletchley Declaration, which set out for the first time a shared understanding of the risks of AI.

The agreement, which was signed by the United States and China but not Russia, said, “We encourage all relevant actors to provide context-appropriate transparency and accountability on their plans to measure, monitor and mitigate potentially harmful capabilities and the associated effects that may emerge, in particular, to prevent misuse and issues of control, and the amplification of other risks.”

On Thursday, Mr. Sunak was asked by journalists about the danger of a dystopian future in which computers and machines take over, as predicted in the film Terminator, and he said, “People developing this technology themselves have raised the risk that AI may pose and it’s important to not be alarmist about this.”

‘We Have a Responsibility to Protect People’

“There’s debate about this topic. People in the industry themselves don’t agree, and we can’t be certain. But there is a case to believe that it may pose a risk on a scale like pandemics and nuclear war, and that’s why, as leaders, we have a responsibility to act to take the steps to protect people, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” he added.

The U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is attending the summit on Thursday, along with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen while Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is attending the event virtually.

President Joe Biden hands Vice President Kamala Harris the pen he used to sign a new executive order regarding artificial intelligence during an event in the East Room of the White House on October 30, 2023 in Washington. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

On Monday, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order which makes it mandatory for all American companies developing AI systems to share their safety tests with the federal government before they can be released to the public.

On Wednesday, China’s technology minister Wu Zhaohui made a speech at the summit in which he said countries must work together to, “ensure that AI always remains under human control.”

Truss ‘Deeply Disturbed’ by China’s Attendance at Summit

Mr. Sunak’s decision to invite China to the summit was criticised by his predecessor Liz Truss, who said she was “deeply disturbed” by the initiative.

Elon Musk, who is also attending the summit, praised Mr. Sunak for holding the event and said, “I think AI is one of the biggest threats.”

Mr. Musk told the PA news agency: “We have for the first time the situation where we have something that is going to be far smarter than the smartest human. We’re not stronger or faster than other creatures, but we are more intelligent, and here we are for the first time, really in human history, with something that is going to be far more intelligent than us.”

He said: “It’s not clear to me if we can control such a thing, but I think we can aspire to guide it in a direction that’s beneficial to humanity. But I do think it’s one of the existential risks that we face and ... the summit is timely, and I applaud the prime minister for holding it.”

In January, at a hearing of Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee, Conservative MP Tracey Crouch asked Michael Cohen, a doctoral candidate in Engineering Science at Oxford University, to “expand on some of the risks you think are posed by AI systems to their end users.”

Mr. Cohen replied, “There is a particular risk ... which is that it could kill everyone.”

On Thursday, Britain’s Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan was asked about a Terminator-style scenario in an interview and said, “That is a risk that is much more hypothetical in nature, that naturally is the one that I am most concerned about because it is the one that would result in the gravest ramifications.”

She was asked about AI being able to overpower humans and told Times Radio, “Well, that is one potential area where it could lead but there are several stages before that.”

But while the British government is focusing on the long-term existential threat, the U.S. government appears keener to focus on more short-term threats from AI, such as disinformation on social media caused by manipulated imagery and voices.

In a speech at the U.S. embassy in London on Wednesday night, Vice President Harris said: “These threats are often referred to as the existential threats of A.I. because, of course, they could endanger the very existence of humanity. These threats, without question, are profound, and they demand global action. But let us be clear, there are additional threats that also demand our action, threats that are currently causing harm and which, to many people, also feel existential.”

PA Media contributed to this content.