01 November 2023
Day one of the AI Safety Summit concluded with the Bletchley Declaration, an agreement by 28 countries and the EU to continue international cooperation towards "human-centric, trustworthy and responsible AI."
Although no clear ‘guardrails’ were established, the Declaration recognises that "the protection of human rights, transparency and explainability, fairness, accountability, regulation, safety, appropriate human oversight, ethics, bias mitigation, privacy and data protection need to be addressed."
Rather than mandate particular standards, the Declaration "encourages" all relevant actors "to provide context-appropriate transparency and accountability on their plans to measure, monitor and mitigate potentially harmful capabilities."
Although lacking in specific guidelines, the combined support of countries including China and the US may signify a move towards greater international consensus on managing AI risks, following the creation of the UN’s AI Advisory Body in August.
In particular, countries in attendance agreed:
◾ To cooperate on building a shared scientific and evidence-based understanding of AI safety risks of shared concern, and sustaining that understanding as capabilities continue to increase
◾ To build respective risk-based policies across countries to ensure safety in shared AI safety risks, collaborating as appropriate but recognising that national approaches may differ based on national circumstances and applicable legal frameworks
◾ Risk-based policies may include increased transparency by private actors developing frontier AI capabilities, appropriate evaluation metrics, tools for safety testing, and developing relevant public sector capability and scientific research
Further AI Safety Summits are due to be held in South Korea (“a mini-summit”) and France in 2024.