OpenAI, the startup behind the controversial ChatGPT chatbot, has chosen London to be the location for its first offices located outside the US.
Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, who has been increasingly more vocal about artificial intelligence (AI)’s potential harms to the US Congress and others, said he sees expanding to London as “an opportunity to attract world-class talent and drive innovation in artificial general intelligence (AGI) development and policy”.
“We’re excited about what the future holds and to see the contributions our London office will make towards building and deploying safe AI,” he added.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that the UK will host the first-ever global summit on AI this autumn.
He has been clear that he wants the UK to become an artificial intelligence (AI) technology superpower and for London to be home to a global body tasked with legislating AI.
“We must act, and act quickly, if we want not only to retain our position as one of the world’s tech capitals but to go even further and make this the best country in the world to start, grow, and invest in tech businesses,” Mr Sunak said at London Tech Week.
“That is my goal and I feel a sense of urgency and responsibility to make sure that we seize it.”
London is already home to Google’s AI arm DeepMind and data analytics giant Palantir, another Google-backed startup Anthropic, as well as numerous British AI firms frequently found at the top of seed-funding lists, like Wayve, Darktrace, OneTrust, Quantexa, Builder.ai, Infogrid, and Thought Machine.
OpenAI had reportedly been considering placing its first international office in either Poland or France, according to Bloomberg. OpenAI’s vice president of people Diane Yoon said London was “globally renowned for its rich culture and exceptional talent pool”.
“We are eager to build dynamic teams in research, engineering, and go-to-market functions, as well as other areas, to reinforce our efforts in creating and promoting safe AGI,” she said.
ChatGPT has been dominating headlines over the past seven months, since it was publicly released for the world to beta test for free in order to ask questions.
The chatbot has been accused of making up facts and providing answers based on institutional biases, due to a probability model that provides different answers depending on probabilities that are assigned various different weights.
OpenAI’s decision to expand into London as their first international office is another vote of confidence for Britain as an AI powerhouse
However, OpenAI has received multi-billion dollar investment from Microsoft, which has put OpenAI algorithms into its Bing browser, Microsoft Office Suite, and Outlook products. Microsoft even launched an OpenAI service just for government customers using its Azure cloud service.
UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology Chloe Smith said OpenAI’s decision to expand into London as their first international office is “another vote of confidence for Britain as an AI powerhouse”.
“Our AI sector already employs more than 50,000 people across the country, and we will continue to foster an approach which unlocks opportunity and cements our place as a global destination for artificial intelligence,” she added.
