PARIS — The United Kingdom’s government is minded against signing the main diplomatic declaration from this week’s AI Action Summit in Paris, according to three people familiar with discussions.
The declaration, which pledges to work toward “inclusive and sustainable AI,” has not got United States backing. Without that, the U.K. has cold feet about approving it, the people said.
Asked by POLITICO at the summit Monday morning, the U.K.’s Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said: “We’re in the negotiations at the moment. That’s something we don’t comment on while the negotiations are unfolding. We’re engaging fully with the French.”
But he described the U.S. as an “unignorable force and one that we engage with absolutely.”
“When you see the trends in AI, it is that the trends are being set by the power of the technology itself, and America is adapting to those realities in the same way that we are.”
Kyle added the U.K. was also in a “great” position in Paris, having published an AI Opportunities Action Plan last month and begun regulatory and planning reform.
“I’m out there saying we’re doing our bit. We’re open for investment. We’ve got a great story on safety and exploiting the opportunities of AI,” he said.
One French official played down the importance of the declaration, saying: “The big diplomatic declarations, they’re not what matters.” They emphasized that France would rather “shift the perspective and the conversation” on artificial intelligence.
A second said “we’ll see” when asked about the U.K. signing the declaration.
The statement is due to be unveiled at a plenary session on Tuesday attended by world leaders including U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
However, POLITICO previously reported that the new U.S. administration was pushing back on several parts of the draft declaration, which mentions “Making AI sustainable for people and the planet.”
The draft was already noteworthy for minimal reference to voluntary safety commitments made by leading AI firms at previous AI summits in the U.K. and South Korea, as the organizers of the Paris summit have deprioritized safety concerns in favor of sovereignty, competition and the environmental impacts of AI.
“The future of AI is a political issue and an issue of sovereignty and strategic dependence,” French President Emmanuel Macron wrote Sunday.
Gaia Marcus, director of the U.K.’s Ada Lovelace Institute, said: “Based on the initial draft, we are concerned that the scaffolding provided by the official summit declaration is not strong enough.”
While the declaration does address “consensus on key structural risks,” Marcus said it “fails to build on the mission of making AI safe and trustworthy, and the safety commitments of previous summits.”
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