UK and US refuse to sign AI summit agreement
The UK and the US have not signed an agreement coming out of this week’s AI Action Summit that pledges an open, inclusive and ethical approach to developing the groundbreaking technology.
China, France, India and Canada are among the key countries to have signed an official communique released today at the culmination of the international summit being held in Paris.
The decision from Britain and America not to sign the statement, in which signatories commit to adopting artificial intelligence in a “safe, secure and trustworthy” way, puts further clear water between the economic approaches of the US and European Union.
Explaining the decision, a government spokesman said that the UK “agreed with much of the Leaders’ Declaration and continue to work closely with our international partners”.
“However, we felt the declaration didn’t provide enough practical clarity on global governance, nor sufficiently address harder questions around national security and the challenge AI poses to it,” he added.
Earlier on Tuesday, US vice-president JD Vance warned against governments adopting an approach to AI that deterred “innovators from taking the risks necessary to advance”.
And in a thinly veiled broadside of the European Union’s approach to technology regulation, he added:”We need international regulatory regimes that foster the creation of AI technology, rather than strangles it. And we need our European friends in particular to look to this new frontier with optimism, rather than trepidation.”
Vance’s comments put him immediately at odds with the summit’s host, French President Emmanuel Macron. In a keynote shortly after the vice-president’s speech, Macron warned: “If we break the trust, AI will divide the world”.
“[We need] to get out of the risk-opportunity dilemma,” he added.
The US and UK’s decision follows reports of disquiet among US officials at some of the wording in the official statement, which featured statements including “sustainable and inclusive AI”.
Following the US’ objections becoming public, the UK’s science and technology minister Peter Kyle told Politico on Monday that the UK “was in negotiations”, and that was “engaging fully with the French”. He also described the US as an “unignorable force and one that we engage with absolutely”.
But after news of the UK’s omission from the AI summit agreement became public on Tuesday, the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson said at a briefing with journalists that they “were not aware of the US reasons or position”.
“[The UK] would only ever sign up to initiatives that are in the UK national interests,” they added.
Emmanuel Macron said countries could still sign up to the communique in the hours after the summit.