Biden administration to convene AI safety summit in California

The Biden administration will host a global safety summit on artificial intelligence (AI) in November to discuss the quickly developing technology and efforts to mitigate its risks.

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will co-host the meeting in San Francisco with government scientists and AI experts from at least nine countries and the European Union, the Commerce Department announced Wednesday. The two-day meeting will be Nov. 20-21.

It comes amid a wider push from the federal government to better understand the capabilities and risks of AI as the technology evolves.

“AI is the defining technology of our generation. With AI evolving at a rapid pace, we at the Department of Commerce, and across the Biden-Harris Administration, are pulling every lever,” Raimondo said in a statement Wednesday, adding, “We want the rules of the road on AI to be underpinned by safety, security, and trust, which is why this convening is so important.”

Blinken stressed the importance of strengthening international collaborations in “harnessing AI technology to solve the world’s greatest challenges.”

Raimondo told The Associated Press the steady rise of AI-generated fakery and how to determine when the technology needs guardrails are among some of the most urgent discussions.

“We’re going to think about how do we work with countries to set standards as it relates to the risks of synthetic content, the risks of AI being used maliciously by malicious actors,” Raimondo told the news service. “Because if we keep a lid on the risks, it’s incredible to think about what we could achieve.”

Representatives from the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, Singapore and the 27-nation European Union will attend the November summit. China, a major player in AI development, was not on the list, but Raimondo told the AP, “we’re still trying to figure out exactly who else might come in terms of scientists.”

“I think that there are certain risks that we are aligned in wanting to avoid, like AIs applied to nuclear weapons, AIs applied to bioterrorism,” she said. “Every country in the world ought to be able to agree that those are bad things and we ought to be able to work together to prevent them.”

The meeting’s timing is notable, occurring about two weeks after the U.S. presidential election, and nearly two months ahead of a wider AI summit in Paris in February.