- The UK’s AI safety summit kicks off on Wednesday.
- Some have already slammed the event for ignoring several key issues.
- Several groups have criticized the UK government’s focus on the existential risks of AI.
The UK’s AI safety summit kicked off on Wednesday, but the event is already surrounded by criticism.
Several groups have criticized the UK government’s emphasis on some of the more existential risks of AI, sidelining other and perhaps more pressing concerns.
Merve Hickok, the president of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, told Insider the summit began with a shared commitment with the US to work together for democratic AI values.
“Then somehow, after the Prime Minister’s meetings with tech companies, it started focusing narrowly only on the existential crisis as defined by AGI taking over,” she said
Not only has the focus been narrowed, she added, but the people at the table are mostly major tech companies.
“Civil society and other voices and communities are sidelined,” she said. “Also, all the concerns about existing AI systems which are impacting our fundamental rights are sidelined as well.”
Hickok is not the only one to raise concerns about the current rhetoric around AI safety.
Two leading experts have dismissed existential threats and some of the doomsday scenarios. Both have suggested big tech companies might have something to gain from inflating the more dramatic fears around AI.
Hickok’s Center for AI and Digital Policy wrote to UK the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, earlier in the month to urge him to include pressing issues of “bias, equity, fairness, and accountability” in the meeting agenda.
Hickok added that the event’s narrow focus risked sidelining these other threats to civil society.
“The UK should not let the AI safety agenda displace the AI fairness agenda,” she said.
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