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LONDON — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday announced he would establish a new artificial intelligence safety institute as well as seeking buy-in for a new global expert panel on the emerging technology.
In a speech on Thursday morning, Sunak laid out his vision for the U.K.’s global AI summit next week, confirming POLITICO’s previous reporting that his government intends to set up a body that will investigate AI risks and share those with global partners.
“I can announce that we will establish the world’s first AI Safety Institute, right here in the U.K.,” he said. “It will advance the world’s knowledge of AI safety, and it will carefully examine, evaluate and test new types of AI so that we understand what each new model is capable of exploring all the risks from social harms like bias and misinformation through to the most extreme risks… we will make the work of our AI Safety Institute available to the world.”
He said the new institute will build on the work of Britain’s existing Frontier AI Taskforce, which he said has already been granted “privileged access” to the technology models of leading AI companies like Google DeepMind, Anthropic and OpenAI.
The institute would publish some information publicly, but would reserve more sensitive national security intel to a smaller group of like-minded governments, a U.K. official with close understanding of the summit said. They were granted anonymity to discuss multilateral negotiations.
“The future vision is to secure the safety of models before they are released,” Sunak said Thursday.
As previously reported by POLITICO, Sunak also said he would seek to set up a new AI research network, modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to publish a state of AI science report.
“I will propose that we establish a truly global expert panel nominated by the countries and organisations attending [the summit] to publish a state of AI science report,” Sunak said.
Under the U.K.’s plans the new body would be distinguished from existing AI research networks like the Franco-Canadian led Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence by including Chinese representation.
Sunak also detailed how the U.K. would “push hard” to agree an international statement about the nature of AI risks, and defended seeking Chinese buy-in for it.
“There can be no serious strategy for AI without at least trying to engage all of the world’s leading AI powers,” Sunak said.
