UK PM Rishi Sunak announces launch of AI Safety Institute

NEW DELHI: The two-day Artificial Intelligence (AI) summit in the United Kingdom came to a close on Thursday with the creation of the AI Safety Institute, the British High Commission in India said in a statement.

The AI Safety Institute, which has become the first task force within G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the European Union) has evolved from the Frontier AI Taskforce, with Songkick founder, Ian Hogarth continuing as its Chair.

The External Advisory Board for the Taskforce will have a number of industry heavyweights from national security to computer science, who will now advise the new global hub.

The Institute intends to carefully test new types of frontier AI to address the potentially harmful capabilities of AI models. In undertaking this research, the AI Safety Institute will look to work closely with the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s institute for data science and AI.

In attendance was Indian Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

Chandrasekhar said that the innovation ecosystem is growing at, “about two and a half to three times faster than the non-digital part of the GDP” in a speech at the summit, shared on X.

In a post on X, Chandrasekhar praised the work of the international community at the UK AI safety summit writing, “Future of tech should be driven by international collaborations rather than just a few countries!”

The collaborative backing of key players like AI leaders Japan and Canada to AI companies OpenAI and DeepMind will strengthen international work on the safe development of frontier AI.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said, “Our AI Safety Institute will act as a global hub on AI safety, leading vital research into the capabilities and risks of this fast-moving technology.”

Michelle Donelan the UK’s Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology said, “The AI Safety Institute will be an international standard bearer. With the backing of leading AI nations, it will help policymakers across the globe in gripping the risks posed by the most advanced AI capabilities, so that we can maximise the enormous benefits.”

The formation of the AI Safety Institute aims to prevent damages that AI may cause in the future, in order to protect “humanity from rapid and unexpected advances in AI”.

New AI models are due to be released next year whose capabilities may not be fully understood, including the launch of Google’s generative AI model due to be released this year.

The Safety Institute’s first task will be to quickly put in place the processes and systems to test them before they launch – including open-source models.

AI Safety Institute Chair Ian Hogarth, said, “Through the AI Safety Institute, we will play an important role in rallying the global community to address the challenges of this fast-moving technology.”

The AI Safety Summit has set the foundations for further talks on the safety of frontier AI, with South Korea set to host the summit next year.