UK's Cleverly says nations must work together on AI governance

UN Security Council session comes ahead of the first global AI safety summit in the UK later this year

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly addresses the UN Security Council on Tuesday. Reuters

Britain’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly on Tuesday called for global governance of artificial intelligence, saying that the transformative technology will touch every nation.

“No country will be untouched by AI,” he said as he chaired the UN Security Council's first meeting on AI, “because AI knows no borders”.

Britain holds the Security Council's rotating presidency for the month of July and wants to highlight the risks of AI, as London seeks a global leadership role in putting guardrails on its use.

“We are here today because AI will affect the work of this council. It could enhance or disrupt global strategic stability. It challenges our fundamental assumptions about defence and deterrence,” Mr Cleverly said.

Mr Cleverly stressed the need for a broad alliance of international partners across various sectors to participate and collaborate.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres welcomed calls for the creation of a new UN body to govern AI, inspired by models as the International Atomic Energy Agency or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Urging the Security Council to approach AI with a “sense of urgency,” Mr Guterres said the new body should support countries trying to maximise the benefits of AI while also mitigating risks and establishing and monitoring regulation.

“What we have seen is just the beginning. Never again will technological innovation move as slowly as today,” he said.

Mr Guterres said he appointed a high-level advisory board on AI that will report on options for its governance by the end of 2023.

Jack Clark, co-founder of AI company Anthropic, said that the emerging technology cannot be left to the private sector, with its vast data troves and access to capital.

He said that AI is being developed without really grasping why it is being created.

“If we do not invest in this, then we run the risk of regulatory capture, compromising global security and handing over the future to a narrow set of private sector actors,” said Mr Clark.

Professor Zeng Yi, co-director of the China-UK Research Centre for AI Ethics and Governance, stressed that recent generative AI systems “are all information processing tools that seem to be intelligent” but don’t have real understanding, and therefore “are not truly intelligent.”

He warned that AI should “never ever pretend to be human”, insisting that humans maintain control of all AI-enabled weapon systems.

“We should use generative AI to assist but never trust them to replace human decision making” he said.

In May, the head of the AI company that makes ChatGPT told a US Senate hearing that government intervention will be critical in mitigating the risks of increasingly powerful systems, saying that as the technology advances, people are concerned about how it could change their lives, and “we are too.”

Last month, EU lawmakers signed off on the world’s first set of comprehensive rules for artificial intelligence, clearing a key hurdle as authorities across the globe race to rein-in AI.

Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that the UK will host a summit on AI this year.