OLIVER DOWDEN, Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Secretary of State for the United Kingdom, said nations are gathering here this week to recommit to help resolve the world’s biggest challenges:  climate change, the Sustainable Development Goals, migration and the Russian Federation’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, an attack on a sovereign member of the United Nations by a permanent member of its Council.  “The most heinous assault imaginable on everything this organization stands for and was founded to prevent,” he said, adding that the international community demands that the Russian Federation end this war tomorrow.  “Until that happens, the United Kingdom will stand alongside Ukraine.” 

He then turned to another contemporary challenge, artificial intelligence, which will change education, business, health care, defence, Government and relations between nations, as well as the United Nations.  The international community needs to prepare for the artificial intelligence of tomorrow, the biggest transformation the world has known.  “Our task as Governments is to understand it, grasp it and seek to govern it,” he said.  Artificial intelligence offers opportunities and the models being developed today could deliver the energy efficiency needed to beat climate change, stimulate crop yields, detect signs of chronic disease or pandemics, better manage supply chains, and enhance productivity in business and Governments.  “In fact, every single challenge discussed at this year’s General Assembly, and more, could be improved or even solved by AI,” he said.  “Perhaps the most exciting thing is that AI can be a democratizing tool, open to everyone.”

The United Kingdom will host the AI Safety Summit in November to forge a shared understanding of the potential risks of frontier artificial intelligence, he said.  Individual companies and countries will strive to push the boundaries as fast and far as possible and Governments must decide how to respond.  “We cannot afford to become trapped in debates about whether AI is a tool for good or a tool for ill; it will be a tool for both,” he said.  “We must prepare for both and insure against the latter.”  In the past, leaders have responded to scientific and technological developments with retrospective regulation.  Yet the necessary guardrails, regulation and governance must be developed in parallel with the technological progress, he said, pointing out that right now, global regulation is falling behind current advances.  Since technology companies and non-State actors often have country-sized influence and prominence in artificial intelligence, meeting the challenge requires a new form of multilateralism.  “Because it is only by working together that we will make AI safe for everyone,” he said. 

The AI Safety Summit will kick-start this process and focus on frontier technology, he said.  The Summit will aim to reach a common understanding of the extreme risks and how the world should confront them.  “And at the same time, focus on how safe AI can be used for the public good,” he added.  Only nation States can provide reassurance that the most significant national security concerns have been allayed.  The United Kingdom’s Frontier AI Taskforce has brought pioneering experts and national security advisers together to developing the capacity to conduct the safe external red-teaming that is critical to building confidence in frontier models.  The artificial intelligence revolution will test the multilateral system to show it can work together on a question that will help define the fate of humanity.  “Our future… humanity’s future… our entire planet’s future… depends on our ability to do so,” he said.  “That is our challenge, and this is our opportunity.  To be, truly, the United Nations.”