U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris warned global leaders that the existential threats posed by artificial intelligence are very real and urgently need to be addressed. Harris’ remarks, delivered in a speech at the U.S. Embassy in Britain, summarized the prevailing view of world governments participating in the first global AI Safety Summit. The two-day event kicked off Wednesday with news that 27 nations — including the U.S., European Union member states and China — signed the Bletchley Declaration on AI, committing to voluntary guidelines to work as a group toward responsible and ethical AI.

Named for the location at which the summit took place — where British computer scientists cracked Germany’s Enigma code during World War II — the Bletchley Declaration focuses on frontier AI, “highly capable foundation models that could possess dangerous capabilities sufficient to pose severe risks to public safety” and which present “a distinct regulatory challenge” in that “dangerous capabilities can arise unexpectedly,” according to a July paper by OpenAI.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and billionaire Elon Musk were among the tech leaders reported to have participated in the UK event. “Executives from leading technology and AI companies, including Anthropic, Google DeepMind, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia” and Tencent were also in attendance, according to The New York Times, which said representatives from the non-profit Algorithmic Justice League of Massachusetts and Britain’s Ada Lovelace Institute were among the civil society groups on hand.

At her embassy speech, Harris “detailed the ways that AI could already disenfranchise and discriminate against vulnerable populations: a senior kicked off his healthcare plan because of a faulty algorithm, a woman threatened by an abusive partner with explicit deep fake photographs, a young father wrongfully imprisoned because of biased facial recognition.”

Speaking at the embassy, Harris said, that “when people around the world cannot discern fact from fiction because of a flood of AI-enabled mis- and disinformation, I ask: Is that not existential for democracy?” writes The New York Times.

In what Politico described as “a major diplomatic coup” for British summit hosts led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, “U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo took the stage on Wednesday morning alongside Wu Zhaohui, China’s vice minister of science.”

While China “is a key participant at the summit, given the country’s role in developing AI,” the invitation was controversial “given the low level of trust between Beijing, Washington and many European capitals when it comes to Chinese involvement in technology,” per Reuters.

Related:
Elon Musk Discusses Perils and Benefits of AI with Rishi Sunak, The New York Times, 11/2/23
Elon Musk Says AI Means Eventually No One Will Need to Work, Business Insider, 11/2/23