Rishi Sunak, the prime minister of Britain, had one final appointment on Thursday night after a busy couple of days internet hosting dozens of presidency leaders, tech executives and different specialists at a summit on the risks of synthetic intelligence: a sit-down with Elon Musk.
Mr. Musk, the omnipresent tech billionaire, was on the town for the A.I. Security Summit that Mr. Sunak had organized at Bletchley Park, the countryside property the place Alan Turing helped crack the Enigma code utilized by the Nazis throughout World Struggle II.
Public officers together with Vice President Kamala Harris and António Guterres, the secretary common of the United Nations, attended the summit, as did tech leaders like Sam Altman, the top of OpenAI; and Reid Hoffman, the investor and co-founder of LinkedIn.
However solely Mr. Musk, a person with rising geopolitical affect via his management of X, Tesla and SpaceX, was given such particular therapy by the British prime minister.
At Lancaster Home, a former royal residence close to Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace, Mr. Sunak interviewed Mr. Musk concerning the potential risks of A.I. and, what, if something, the world can do to organize itself. The dialogue was streamed on X, Mr. Musk’s social media platform previously often known as Twitter.
“A.I. can be a power for good, most certainly,” mentioned Mr. Musk. The issue, he mentioned, is that the prospect of issues going very badly is “not zero.” Synthetic intelligence is creating “quicker than any expertise I’ve seen in historical past by far,” he added.
Mr. Sunak mentioned he believed A.I. posed many dangers, however downplayed a number of the potential unfavourable results. Whereas he encounters many citizens anxious about automation and job losses, Mr. Sunak mentioned he believed A.I. would enhance productiveness, create jobs and function a “co-pilot” to assist employees relatively than change them — a view not shared by many labor unions.
The 2 males are an odd pairing. Mr. Sunak is a buttoned-up former Goldman Sachs banker whose best political attribute in turning into prime minister was that he could be a gentle pair of fingers after the ramshackle management of his predecessors Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Against this, Mr. Musk, identified for predawn social media posts and intentionally provocative statements, seems to thrive extra in a state of improvisation and chaos.
What each have in widespread is that they’ve been underneath intense scrutiny.
Mr. Sunak’s maintain on energy is doubtful. His Conservative Occasion, which should name an election by January 2025, has ruled for 13 years and is being held accountable for a stagnant economic system, employee strikes and public companies underneath pressure after years of presidency cuts. Mr. Musk has confronted criticism for, amongst different issues, permitting racist, antisemitic and hateful speech to thrive on X since he purchased the platform final yr.
Mr. Sunak, who attended Stanford College and has spoken fondly of his time in Silicon Valley, tried to make use of the occasion at Bletchley Park to place Britain as a world chief on A.I. The occasion produced little when it comes to concrete coverage, however many in attendance mentioned it kick-started a world dialog about the necessity to safeguard A.I.
Mr. Musk was maybe the largest identify in attendance. On Wednesday, he participated in a number of closed-doors classes and posed for pictures.
“Individuals would come as much as say, ‘Can I simply take a selfie?’ Then actually rapidly any individual else would say, ‘Oh, can I get one, too,’” mentioned Max Tegmark, a professor on the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise, who attended the occasion and has identified Mr. Musk for years.
Mr. Sunak seemed to be equally taken by Mr. Musk. He opened the dialog with an admiring quote from Invoice Gates about Mr. Musk’s being certainly one of his era’s nice inventors.
“What are the forms of issues governments like ours ought to be doing?” Mr. Sunak requested deferentially at one level.
Within the viewers have been a mixture of British officers and enterprise executives, together with Demis Hassabis, the chief govt of Google’s A.I. lab DeepMind. The musical artist Will.i.am sat within the entrance row.
Some noticed Mr. Sunak’s dialog with Mr. Musk as a not-so-subtle try to lift Britain’s standing with entrepreneurs and tech firms at a time when the nation’s economic system is languishing. At a information convention earlier on Thursday, a British journalist requested Mr. Sunak if the assembly was about A.I. or making an attempt to lure a Tesla battery plant to Britain. (Mr. Sunak praised Mr. Musk’s experience about A.I.)
“He desires the U.Ok. to draw investments,” mentioned Marietje Schaake, the worldwide coverage director at Stanford’s Cyber Coverage Heart, who moderated one of many discussions on the A.I. Security Summit. The Musk interview, she mentioned, “appears to be like a bit like a media stunt.”
Mr. Sunak’s dialog with Mr. Musk veered, at instances, towards science fiction. Mr. Musk outlined a future through which computer systems would surpass human intelligence and other people wouldn’t should work. At one other level, he mentioned the creation of humanoid robots that would wish off switches.
In an surprising heartfelt second, Mr. Musk mentioned A.I. programs may turn into so superior that it might be an individual’s “nice pal” by remembering conversations and studying their likes and dislikes. He famous that his son has studying disabilities and hassle making buddies. “An A.I. pal could be nice for him,” he mentioned.
