Yes AI comes with significant risks – but it would be madness not to embrace its opportunities to make Britain better
WE’VE all heard the horror stories and worst-case scenarios of Artificial Intelligence.
Chemical and biological weapons developed by robots, terror groups helped in planning attacks and the threat of human extinction are all potentially on the table.
So, should we be worried about the dangerous potential of AI?
Will it benefit us and our families?
These are probably the two most common questions I get asked in my job.
Well, my answers are: Yes and yes.
This is why we are bringing together countries such as America, France and China today and tomorrow for a summit at Bletchley Park.
They have all been invited as we need all the major players around the table if we are to develop a serious strategy for the decades to come.
In the last couple of years, billions and billions of (mainly) dollars have been invested in making AI more and more powerful, and it’s achieved amazing things.
Like Google DeepMind’s Alphafold which predicts the shape of complex proteins that make up the human body.
Generations of painstaking human scientific breakthroughs have been condensed into moments — opening the door to new medical treatments or even a cure for cancer.
Even the most popular AI models today such as ChatGPT boast astonishing abilities.
A company called Wolfram Alpha recently got it to sit a maths A-Level exam — it scored 96 per cent.
Of course, apps that create photorealistic images from a simple written description can be great fun when producing pictures of cats roller-skating in the park, but can be used to create deep fakes which can ruin lives.
Generative AI can be used to combat air pollution, but could also be deployed to pollute public opinion, and the models designed to discover new drugs could be warped to uncover novel bioweapons.
Just like any new technology, while the vast majority of people are working to ensure it improves our lives, there are those in the world who will inevitably try to use it to do us harm.
That is why I am so committed to ensuring we grip these risks so we can seize the opportunities for our country and our public services, such as the NHS.
The experts agree the country that tackles these risks first will be the first to fully take advantage of the limitless opportunities ahead.
That is why the UK is putting more investment into AI safety right now than any other country in the world.
We do not have decades of time.
AI is improving so quickly that we have to take action now.
And this is why Britain hosting the world’s first global AI Safety Summit is such a historic and important event — looking long-term to build a brighter future.
It marks the beginning of a new international effort to ensure AI benefits us all — giving us faster and cleaner transport, improving education and, most significantly, giving us more time with our loved ones who we would otherwise have had to say goodbye to earlier than we should.
Britain making the long-term decisions to lead the way on this vitally important issue will be something our grandchildren will read about in the history books.
Because being at the centre of safe, responsible AI development means that our values are at the centre too.
Democracy, fairness, freedom, rule of law, tolerance and respect — these are the values that have made our country what it is today, and if we continue leading the world in safe AI then we will ensure these are the values of the future as well.
So, to answer the original questions, it would be madness not to embrace the opportunities presented to us from AI.
Because if we get this right, it will transform all our lives for the better.
It would equally be madness not to take action to manage those risks.
Today the world will come together at Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing pioneered early versions of computing and helped the Allies win World War Two by breaking the German Enigma codes.
I do not underestimate how challenging this issue is.
But ahead of the Bletchley Summit I am guided by Turing’s words that “we can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done”.
We stand ready to tackle one of the greatest challenges of our time.