AI speech: Rishi Sunak declares UK Government right to take advantage of artificial intelligence and says people should not lose sleep over AI

The Prime Minister insisted he wanted to be “honest” with the public about the risks.

Rishi Sunak has urged the public not to “lose sleep” over artificial intelligence (AI), but admitted humanity could lose control of the technology.

The Prime Minister insisted AI could help people in their jobs rather than replace them and insisted the UK Government was right to take advantage of the opportunities created by technology.

Delivering a speech in central London on Thursday, Mr Sunak insisted ministers would take all the required precautions, with Government documents offerings a “stark warning” of the risks.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak delivers a speech setting out how he will address the dangers presented by artificial intelligence while harnessing its benefits.

He said: "I don’t want to be alarmist and there is real debate about this, some experts think it will never happen at all.

"But however uncertain and unlikely these risks are, if they did manifest themselves, the consequences would be incredibly serious and when so many of the biggest developers of this technology themselves warn of these risk, leaders have a responsibility to take them seriously and to act and that is what I am doing today.

“Get this wrong and it could make it easier to build chemical or biological weapons. Terrorist groups could use AI to spread fear and disruption on an even greater scale.

“Criminals could exploit AI for cyber attacks, disinformation, fraud or even child sexual abuse. And in the most unlikely, but extreme cases, there is even the risk that humanity could lose control of AI completely through the kind of AI sometimes referred to as ‘super intelligence’.”

But Mr Sunak insisted it was “not a risk that people need to be losing sleep over right now” and stressed he did not want to be “alarmist”.

The Government will host an AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park next week, bringing together world leaders, tech firms and civil society to discuss AI.

China has been invited to the summit – a decision Mr Sunak has defended despite warnings from his own MPs. The Prime Minister argued there can be “no serious strategy for AI without at least trying to engage all of the world’s leading AI powers”.

He said: “That might not have been the easy thing to do, but it was the right thing to do.”

Mr Sunak also vowed to be a world leader on AI, saying the world looked to the UK as an example on issues like technology regulation.

He said: “We, as a country, tend to get this right. We tend to take a principles-based, proportionate approach to regulation that protects the things that we need to protect, whilst allowing the maximum amount of innovation to happen here”.

Mr Sunak had earlier announced the Government would establish the “world’s first” AI Safety Institute, which the Prime Minister said would “carefully examine, evaluate and test new types of AI, so that [we] understand what each new model is capable of” and explore “all the risks”.

Ahead of the Prime Minister’s speech, the Government published several discussion papers showing its evaluation of the risk of AI, which suggested there were new opportunities for growth and advances, but also a range of “new dangers”.

The papers said there was insufficient evidence to rule out a threat to humanity from AI and that it was hard to predict many of the risks because of the broad range of potential uses in the future.