RISHI Sunak repeatedly dodged questions about a question-and-answer session between him and Elon Musk as he hailed the success of a ground-breaking summit on the safety of artificial intelligence.
The eccentric Twitter/X owner is due to speak with the Prime Minister in a pre-recorded interview which will be broadcast on the social media platform on Thursday night.
Musk’s star power has diverted some attention away from the substance of the international talks at Bletchley Park, once home to World War Two codebreakers.
Following a speech closing the conference, from which the Scottish Government was barred, Sunak was twice asked about his conversation with Musk (below).
Both came as two part questions on the detail of the talks and neither were answered directly.
Sky News asked the Prime Minister: “Looking forward to your meeting with Elon Musk this evening, what is most interesting to you out of that meeting: his views on killer robots or whether he might be prepared to build a Tesla battery factory here in the UK, for example?”
The Prime Minister responded to the first part of the question, which was about deepening the access Britain’s new AI safety institute would have to developing technology.
He was then asked by The Telegraph: “What are you planning to raise with him tonight and also, is your chat not being livestreamed because you’re concerned about what he might say?”
Sunak did not say what he had spoken with Musk about and did not say why the conversation had been pre-recorded rather than livestreamed.
He replied: “Elon Musk is someone who has for a long time spoken about AI, he’s an investor and entrepreneur, he’s developed AI companies.
“As one of the leading actors in AI, it’s important that he was engaged in this summit and I’m delighted that he was attending and participating yesterday.”
He added: “It’s not about any one person.”
Musk has a history of making off-the-cuff remarks which have serious consequences.
He was taken to court in an ultimately unsuccessful defamation case in 2019 after he branded someone a “pedo” on Twitter/X.
In 2018, he was forced to step down as chairman of his engineering firm Tesla – he remains CEO – after he was charged with fraud by the US Government over a joke about the company’s stock price on social media.
'AI is your co-pilot'
Addressing concerns AI could make certain jobs obsolete, Sunak added: “I know this is an anxiety that people have.
“We should look at AI much more as a co-pilot than something that necessarily is going to replace someone’s job.
“AI is a tool that can help almost everybody do their jobs better, faster, quicker, and that’s how we’re already seeing it being deployed.”
He suggested the future could see every schoolchild issued their own AI tutor and suggested the technology could speed up the work of civil servants.
In his speech, the PM said the summit had helped “tip the balance in favour of humanity” in terms of how the technology could change lives for better or worse.
He said: “While this was only the beginning of the conversation, I believe the achievements of this summit will tip the balance in favour of humanity, because they show that we have both the political will and the capability to control this technology, and secure its benefits for the long term.”
'We need to move quickly'
The summit has not resulted in nations or companies agreeing any binding rules on the technology, which Sunak defended as the right decision given how quickly it is developing.
Asked whether the example of social media showed the need for governments to introduce new laws quickly in response to emerging technology, the PM replied: “The lesson is that we need to move quickly and that’s what we’re doing.
“The technology is developing at such a pace that governments have to make sure that we can keep up.
“Now, before you start mandating things and legislating for things I think A) by the way that takes time and we need to move faster, and we are, but secondly you need to know exactly what you’re legislating for and that’s why our safety institute is so important.
“So far we’ve got the co-operation we need, but, of course, I think everyone would acknowledge, ultimately, binding requirements will likely be necessary, but it’s important that we do those in the right way and that needs to be based on empirical evidence that we’ll get from our testing.”
