Nothing to say in comment, except the small-mindedness of some politicians
any guess as to whether Team China would bother unless the entire venue is open & transparent?
politico.com
U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt defends China’s invitation to AI summit
Hunt begins a multi-day visit to major U.S. tech companies on Wednesday as the country aims to expand its own artificial intelligence and life sciences industries.
“If you’re trying to create structures that make AI something that overall is a net benefit to humanity, then you can’t just ignore the second-biggest economy in the world,” Hunt said in an interview that will air Wednesday. “That doesn’t mean that you make any kind of compromises with your values but sometimes dialogue can be beneficial.”
The summit, announced in Juneby Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, is a U.K.-led effort to convene global tech leaders — and to position a post-Brexit nation in the center of the global debate about AI safety. Separate from both the EU and the U.S. regulatory conversations, the U.K. summit got a key endorsementfrom President Joe Biden, though Biden himself is reported not to be attending.
POLITICO previously reported that U.S. and EU officials would prefer China not be involved in the event, though National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson later said “the United States is fine with China attending the summit.”
Hunt’s remarks come as he is set to begin a tour of tech hubs along the U.S. West Coast on Wednesday that will include stops in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles for meetings with the CEOs of Amazon, Microsoft and Google, among other major American players. He will also host a roundtable with video game companies, including Activision Blizzard, which has struggled to win U.K approval for its acquisition by Microsoft.
The U.K. aims to build on its existing startup community, which Hunt said is home to the most ventures in Europe valued over $1 billion, and ultimately become “as big as the mothership” Silicon Valley itself, he said. It plans to get there, in part, by striking a balance between regulation-heavy Europe and regulation-light U.S.
But some of the U.K.’s regulatory proposals, such as new digital competition rules, have garnered pushback from Big Tech firms. Investors have balked at perceived overreach by the country’s antitrust regulator, which has derailed several Big Tech acquisitions in recent years. Meanwhile, Apple and Meta-owned WhatsApp have also signaled they would shutter services in the country over rules they say threaten user privacy. |
