Tech titans will not block drive to "manage" AI – UK's Miliband
UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband vowed not to let tech titans "stand in the way" of efforts to regulate AI as he addressed the Labour Party conference on Monday.
Miliband said the UK would use its presidency of the G20 next year to lead the way on "managing" AI amid warnings the technology could threaten humanity's continued existence.
He also warned that regulation could not be left up to big tech firms focused on maximising profits.
Speaking on the main stage of the Labour conference in Liverpool, he said AI offered "inspiring" technological progress but also "daunting" threats.
He said: "The lesson of history is that we cannot leave it to corporations to put in place the guardrails to serve the public interest.
"It is neither their purpose nor their motive. Theirs is to maximise profits. Friends, we cannot and will not allow that to come at the expense of our children or indeed humanity.
"That is why as part of our G20 presidency next year, this country will lead the efforts to manage AI so we keep our country and our world safe, and I say no tech titan should stand in our way."
Chancellor John Healey struck a more positive tone about the future of AI, using his conference speech to brand it the "greatest innovation of our time".
"Every business, every community, every hospital, every school, everywhere can benefit from adopting this," he said.
"It's at the centre of a groundswell of new world-leading British tech companies, and it's the driving force with which this new age of industrialisation can be built.
"Yes, we need to face the serious risks to national security, to personal data, to our children's well-being, and it will change our labour market in fundamental ways.
"But I give you this commitment: we won't let AI leave Britain's workers behind, and we will make sure that Britain wins in this AI revolution."
Miliband's intervention follows mounting warnings about the risks posed by AI, including from some within the industry itself.
Earlier this month, researchers at AI firm Anthropic quit their jobs to call for greater regulation of the technology and warn that it risked ending humanity.
Their warnings prompted Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei to call for AI firms to slow down development to give safety measures time to catch up.
And last week, the UK's Alan Turing Institute published a report saying there was "broad agreement regarding the realistic possibility of catastrophic AI risks in the short to medium term".
Those risks included "cheaper, more convincing and harder to detect" misinformation and "bad actors" creating "new chemical and biological threats with less reliance on human expertise".
By Christopher McKeon and George Thompson, Press Association Political Staff
source: PA
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