The AI Seoul Summit, hosted by the United Kingdom and the Republic of Korea, is taking place on May 21 and 22. The summit aims to bring together international governments, global industry leaders, academia, and civil society to discuss artificial intelligence.
The two-day AI Seoul Summit commenced on Tuesday with an online leaders’ session co-hosted by President Yoon Suk Yeol and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says, “It’s a world first to have so many leading AI companies from so many different parts of the globe all agreeing to the same commitments on AI safety.”
This event follows the inaugural AI Safety Summit, which was held in November last year at Bletchley Park, United Kingdom.
“The UK’s Bletchley summit was a great success, and together with the Republic of Korea, we are continuing that success by delivering concrete progress at the AI Seoul Summit,” adds Sunak.
During the summit, 16 AI tech companies globally, including firms from the US, China, and the Middle East, have made new commitments to develop AI safely.
Republic of Korea Minister Lee says, “Ensuring AI safety is crucial for sustaining recent remarkable advancements in AI technology, including generative AI, and for maximizing AI opportunities and benefits, but the efforts of a single country or company alone cannot achieve this.”
“In this regard, we warmly welcome the ‘Frontier AI Safety Commitments’ established by global AI companies in collaboration with the governments of the Republic of Korea and the UK during the ‘AI Seoul Summit,’ and we expect companies to implement effective safety measures throughout the entire AI lifecycle of design, development, deployment, and use,” adds Lee.
Here are the companies that have signed up to the fresh ‘Frontier AI Safety Commitments’:
- Amazon
- Anthropic
- Cohere
- Google / Google DeepMind
- G42
- IBM
- Inflection AI
- Meta
- Microsoft
- Mistral AI
- Naver
- OpenAI
- Samsung Electronics
- Technology Innovation Institute
- xAI
- Zhipu.ai
Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan says, “The true potential of AI will only be unleashed if we’re able to grip the risks. It is on all of us to make sure AI is developed safely and today’s agreement means we now have bolstered commitments from AI companies and better representation across the globe.”
AI Seoul Summit Pledge: What is it about?
The AI tech companies have pledged to release safety frameworks outlining how they will measure the risks of their frontier AI models, such as examining the risk of misuse of technology by bad actors.
The frameworks will also outline when severe risks, unless adequately mitigated, would be “deemed intolerable” and what companies will do to ensure thresholds are not surpassed.
In the most extreme cases, the companies have also committed to “not develop or deploy a model or system at all” if the risks cannot be kept below the specified thresholds, even with mitigating measures.
On defining these thresholds, companies will take input from trusted actors, including home governments, as appropriate, before being released ahead of the AI Action Summit in France in early 2025.
After the meeting, everyone agreed on a declaration recognising the importance of AI safety, innovation, and inclusivity. The declaration aims to deal with the various opportunities and challenges related to designing, developing, deploying, and using AI.
Computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, often referred to as the “godfather of AI,” expressed support for the commitments while emphasizing the necessity of accompanying them with regulation, reports Reuter.
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