What will Elon Musk and Rishi Sunak talk about in their AI chat at Bletchley Park today?

The UK’s AI Safety Summit closes right now, with UK prime minister Rishi Sunak convening a small group of world and enterprise leaders to debate the dangers of AI. However maybe essentially the most shocking improvement is a dialog resulting from happen this night between Sunak and entrepreneur Elon Musk.

Full particulars of the occasion are nonetheless unclear, however will probably be broadcast on X, Musk’s social media platform, on a delay. The dialog is scheduled to final 45 minutes and can reportedly be moderated by an unknown particular person, with some viewers members, together with tech executives and journalists, invited to ask questions. Politico reports that the UK authorities has mentioned that the dialog received’t be edited earlier than broadcast.

So, what’s going to the 2 males discuss? Listed here are some doable matters.

The danger of AI doom

Even earlier than Musk arrived within the UK, he was warning concerning the dangers of AI. Talking to podcast host Joe Rogan, he mentioned that AI improvement wanted to be carried out fastidiously to keep away from posing existential dangers to humanity. It’s a message he repeated as soon as he arrived within the UK, telling reporters he thought AI was a real risk.

Not everybody is bound any dialog about threat might be earnestly carried out. “I’d speculate that the dialog they’ve might be framed as a dialogue about the deserves of AI regulation, however, in actuality, it’s going to function a stage for these two self-indulgent people to flaunt themselves of their aspirational spheres – politics and tech,” says one former Twitter worker who was laid off by Musk, chatting with New Scientist anonymously.

Pausing AI improvement

Musk was one of many signatories of a letter, printed in March, calling for a pause in AI improvement. The letter prompt that AI corporations ought to halt for six months any improvement of AI techniques extra highly effective than people who had been then state-of-the-art, together with OpenAI’s GPT-4 mannequin.

The letter gained consideration, however in the end didn’t make a distinction: improvement has continued apace. But within the summaries of panel discussions offered on the finish of the primary day of the summit, the concept of a improvement pause was as soon as extra raised – and might be mentioned by Sunak and Musk.

China’s function in AI

The significance of China in the way forward for AI improvement is a vital dialogue level, however might be one which each males would like to duck.

For Sunak, there’s a need to court docket Chinese language funding and wealth, maintaining the nation onside, whereas additionally avoiding awkward discussions with extra sceptical wings of his Conservative occasion, who argued against inviting China to the summit within the first place.

Musk additionally has his personal China difficulty: round 1 in every 8 electrical automobiles bought in China are made by Musk’s firm, Tesla, whereas the agency operates the biggest car manufacturing plant in the world exterior the US, in Shanghai.

A Musk wild card

One of many challenges of agreeing to a spontaneous dialog with Musk is his notorious unpredictability. Given his enterprise pursuits in electrical automobiles, house exploration and social media, there’s a risk that Musk may ask Sunak to decide to supporting a number of of his companies, or the industries through which they function. Or maybe he’ll simply say no matter occurs to be on his thoughts at that second.

“I’m certain [Musk] will placed on his finest impression of an affordable and sage innovator, however my cash is on him dropping sufficient wild-eyed and attention-grabbing hysteria that Rishi might find yourself struggling to maintain any type of concentrate on actuality and accountable motion,” says Mike Katell on the Alan Turing Institute in London. “In the meantime, the PM desires a lot to appear to be he’s as cool because the tech bros. However, given his debating associate, I believe he’ll be fortunate to emerge trying something apart from flat-footed and sycophantic.”