A Preview of the British Prime Minister’s First-Ever Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit with Paul Rennie OBE, Head of the Global Economy Group at the UK Embassy

“The job we are having here is not to set some kind of ceiling; it is to try and set a common understanding of a floor,” says Rennie

“The Prime Minister’s committed £100,000,000 (one hundred million pounds) to our Frontier Model Task Force, which is bringing together some of the best minds in the world to look at this problem.”

The British Embassy’s Paul Rennie OBE and Washington AI Network founder Tammy Haddad

Washington, DC – In a new episode of the Washington AI Network podcast, host Tammy Haddad speaks with Paul Rennie OBE, Head of the Global Economy Group at the UK Embassy, about the British Prime Minister’s upcoming Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit scheduled for November 1 and 2. Rennie leads the UK’s climate and energy, economic security and trade, and science and technology networks across the United States.

Highlights of the interview are below:

Paul Rennie on the UK’s goals for the summit:

“This summit is both part of the wider international picture, as it is much a waypoint to the future conversations we will need to have about AI. And right now we have focused on AI safety because that is the first block in the puzzle, but after this, talking about AI for good and how we expand it will become so much more important.”

Paul Rennie on collaboration between government and the private sector:

“This is not a case of governments going away in a box and coming up with their plans. It has to be in collaboration with the companies themselves. It has to be in collaboration with the academics.” We need to understand how these models work. The companies themselves don’t fully understand how the models work.”

Paul Rennie on misinformation in elections:

“People have been trying to influence elections since the first time I’m sure we had elections. You know, there are all kinds of very interesting ways to support and corrupt and so on. I think the difference now is with the generative AI, or the risk with generative AI, is that one person’s potential impact is now so much greater.”

Paul Rennie on the UK’s role in the global AI community:

“The UK has become the go-to destination for all the major AI companies looking at their European headquarters. The UK taking on this role, thinking about AI safety is both, I think, a reflection of not only our technology capability but also our very real interest in how do we make the AI work well for us.”

Full transcript here.

The Washington AI Network Podcast is hosted by media veteran and Washington AI Network founder Tammy Haddad and produced and recorded by Haddad Media.  It is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Audioboom).