The UK AI Summit
The UK AI Summit
Glad to see something come out of it, but we could have hoped for more.
My remarks on the just-signed Bletchley Declaration.
Lost in my email was a very important, perhaps historic open letter (AI SUMMIT IS DOMINATED BY BIG TECH AND A ‘MISSED OPPORTUNITY’) that I have now signed. It was drafted by Connected by Data, The Trades Union Congress and Open Rights Group. and signed by Mozilla, Amnesty International, the AFL-CIO, the ETUC and many more. I see this as landmark moment.
An excerpt from a press release about the letter:
We the people need to speak up, and we can’t let big tech call all the shots.
Gary Marcus founded Geometric Intelligence (acquired by Uber), is an Emeritus Professor at NYU, hosted the 8 part podcast Humans versus Machines and just launched the Center for the Advancement of Trustworthy AI.
It's the usual strategy employed by big business and big government, they will say the subject matter is too complex for the common people to understand or that it involves "national security" and therefore can not be discussed openly, leaving only themselves as makers of the decisions.
Judging from the coverage in the UK press, I fear the summit had more to do with UK politics and giving the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, publicity than public policy let alone public safety. Such grand declarations are too often a smokescreen behind which to do nothing, or worse, to do the opposite of their public facing agenda.