Tech billionaire Elon Musk will attend the UK’s AI Safety Summit this week and host a conversation with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday evening.
Musk’s expected attendance will be seen as a major boost for Sunak after several world leaders – including US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanual Macron – snubbed the summit.
However, Musk’s attendance will do little to abate criticisms that the summit’s 100-strong guest list favours US tech giant over homegrown AI startups.
Musk will join the likes of OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft and Google at Bletchley Park this week.
“As it stands, this ‘only-giants-can-speak’ approach carries across a worrying message to the AI startup community,” said Dr Roeland P-J E Decorte, CEO of Decorte Future Industries, writing for UKTN.
Sunak posted on X that he will be hosting a conversation about AI with Musk after the AI Safety Summit on Thursday.
“In conversation with Elon Musk. After the AI Safety Summit. Thursday night on X,” Sunak posted.
https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1719055211451306003
Reports suggest Musk will attend the summit in person. UKTN has contacted DSIT for clarification.
US Vice-President Kamala Harris and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are due to attend the summit, which will focus on the risks associated with frontier AI.
In July, Musk started his own AI company, xAI, whose mission is to “understand the true nature of the universe”. Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, played a founding role in ChatGPT maker OpenAI, but is no longer involved with the company.
Musk acquired Twitter in October last year at a $44bn valuation. Today the social media company’s value has plummeted to $19bn (£15.6bn), according to reporting by Fortune.
Listen: Getting AI safety right and the danger of leaving it to Big Tech, with Graphcore CEO Nigel Toon