South Korea, UK to host AI summit in Seoul as risks mount

By Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea and Britain will host a global AI summit in Seoul this week, as the breathtaking pace of innovation since the first AI summit in November last year leaves governments scrambling to keep up with a growing array of risks.

"Risks such as large-scale labour market impacts, AI-enabled hacking or biological attacks, and society losing control over general-purpose AI could emerge," although there is debate about the likelihood, a global AI safety report, backed by experts in more than 30 countries, said on Friday.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol will oversee a virtual summit on Tuesday, amid calls for better regulation of artificial intelligence despite disagreements over how the technology may affect humanity.

"Although positive efforts have been made to shape global AI governance, significant gaps still remain," Sunak and Yoon said in an opinion article published in Britain's i newspaper and South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo, entitled "Only global AI standards can stop a race to the bottom."

The scope of challenges has expanded since the November event, billed as the AI Safety Summit.

The meetings beginning Tuesday for the AI Seoul Summit will discuss three priorities - AI safety, innovation and inclusion, according to the summit's website.

Yoon's office said participating leaders would adopt an agreement after discussing governance associated with AI use.

Leaders of Group of Seven (G7) major powers, Singapore and Australia have been invited, and China will attend the summit's ministerial session, a South Korean presidential official said.

"It will be the decisions of societies and governments that will determine the future of AI," said the AI safety report released on Friday.

The report acknowledges a widening front of risks from the rapidly evolving technology - not only existential risks to humanity, but AI inequality, data scarcity, use of copyright material, and the environmental impact due to the vast amount of electricity used by AI data centres.

At the November summit, Tesla's Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rubbed shoulders with some of their fiercest critics, while China co-signed the "Bletchley Declaration" on collectively managing AI risks alongside the United States and others.

"Looking forward to this," Musk said in a post on his social media platform X, responding to Yoon's posting on the upcoming summit. It was not clear whether Musk would join the summit.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee, additional reporting by Ju-min ParkEditing by Ed Davies, Christian Schmollinger and Bernadette Baum)