UK will lead on ‘guard rails’ to limit dangers of AI, says Rishi Sunak

theguardian.com:

The UK will lead on limiting the dangers of artificial intelligence, 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”.

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.

He also launched a £100m UK taskforce last month to develop “safe and reliable” applications for AI with the aim of making the country a science and technology superpower by 2030.

But, speaking on the plane to Japan for the G7 summit, where AI will be discussed, Sunak said a global approach to regulation was needed. “We have taken a deliberately iterative approach because the technology is evolving quickly and we want to make sure that our regulation can evolve as it does as well,” he said. “Now that is going to involve coordination with our allies … you would expect it to form some of the conversations as well at the G7.

“I think that the UK has a track record of being in a leadership position