Rishi Sunak is trying to do three things with this week’s AI summit, and only one of them has much to do with artificial intelligence. There is no doubt that the prime minister, who is personally deeply immersed in details of large-language models, sees an opportunity to focus the world’s attention on their risks.
Sunak rages at suggestions that Britain is too small to guide the world’s approach to AI safety, a rather Boris Johnson-ish boosterism that is in danger of setting expectations unreasonably high and will result in suggestions that he has been snubbed because President Xi will not attend the summit.
But with the United States, China and the European Union all coming up with their own approaches to AI safety, there was never much chance that Britain would write global rules on regulation. Sunak has, though, already pushed the existential risks of AI higher up the world agenda. Given the geopolitical context, even the most token suggestion that the US and China are heading in similar directions on international frameworks probably counts as progress — particularly if some of the world’s key tech companies are also on board.
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That would also contribute to Sunak’s second goal, the attempt to prove that Britain has recovered from its post-Brexit meltdown and is once again a serious, reliable, and important global partner. Alongside remaining in lockstep with western allies, this desire for geopolitical respectability has been the central thrust of his foreign policy for the past year.
The suggestion that Foreign Office officials sought to exclude Binyamin Netanyahu from the summit could put this at risk — but the revelation that ministers firmly resisted could also ensure that the Israeli prime minister keeps his virtual speaking slot despite the pressures of the conflict in his country and Gaza.
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Fantasies about a US-China agreement aside, even a moderately productive summit that avoids diplomatic spats would allow Sunak to claim he is ensuring that Britain is back making positive contributions on the world’s biggest issues.
And then there is raw politics. Sunak’s party conference pitch was that he is the man to break free of short-termism and equip the country for the future. In his speech on AI last week, he explicitly cast his desire for global rules as part of his aim to “do the right thing, not the easy thing”, arguing: “You can trust me to make the right long-term decisions.”
It is hard to see anyone voting at the next election based on who they think will best protect them from the robot apocalypse, but Downing Street hopes that talking about AI will also highlight the contrast between the tech-savvy Sunak, 43, and the 61-year-old Sir Keir Starmer, burnishing the prime minister’s claim to be the candidate of the future.
Yet adding AI regulation to cancelling HS2, banning smoking and abolishing A-levels will hardly assuage Conservative fears about a lack of a unifying theme in Sunak’s relaunch. In comparison to the Tories’ political predicament, two days trying to agree global regulation of AI may seem to the prime minister like a welcome break.
