LONDON: The UK will lead on limiting the dangers of artificial intelligence, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said, after calls from some tech experts and business leaders for a moratorium.
Sunak said AI could bring benefits and prove transformative for society, but it had to be introduced “safely and securely with guard rails in place”, media reports said on May 19.
The prime minister’s comments sound a more cautious approach than in the past, after tech leaders including Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk, and Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak added their names to nearly 30,000 signatures on a letter urging a pause in significant projects.
The letter called for a moratorium while the capabilities and dangers of systems such as ChatGPT-4 are properly studied and mitigated in response to fears about the creation of digital minds, fraud, disinformation and the risk to jobs.
Sunak has been an advocate of AI, emphasising its benefits rather than risks, and in March the government unveiled a light-touch regulatory programme that did not appear to include proposals for any new laws or enforcement bodies.
