© Reuters. UK to host first AI summit as tech boosts economy by billions
Proactive Investors – Britain will host the world’s first summit on artificial intelligence this autumn, the government has announced, amid an intense debate over the viability of the technology.
AI already contributes £3.7bn to the UK economy and supports over 50,000 jobs, according to the government, though questions have been raised over the safety of the increasingly-human-like programmes.
High-ranking Google (NASDAQ:) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:) staff have been among those warning of the detrimental risks of AI, particularly if the booming technology falls into the hands of “bad actors”.
British prime Rishi Sunak minister echoed calls for AI to be developed in a “safe and secure” way on Thursday, adding it had “incredible potential to transform […] lives for the better”.
Autumns’ AI summit, announced amid Sunak’s visit to the United States, will aim to provide a “platform for countries to work together” in addressing the risks of the technology, the government said.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT became the fastest application in history to reach 100mln users earlier this year, sailing past the milestone in January just two months after being launched.
Growing popularity of language models and chatbots even led Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque to predict in May that the economic impact such programmes would be bigger than the industrial revolution.
PwC forecast in 2017 that UK gross domestic product could get a 10.3% boost by 2030 as AI leads to higher productivity, greater personalisation of products and lower costs.
This would mark a £232bn increase, PwC predicted, mainly driven by stronger demand as products improve by adopting AI systems.
