Kamala Harris to Attend AI Summit in the UK Next Week

Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States, will participate in a meeting on artificial intelligence in the UK next week. This summit comes shortly after President Joe Biden issued an executive order regarding this emerging technology. Harris is scheduled to travel to the UK on Tuesday, November 1, and return to the US on November 3. Douglas Emhoff, the Second Gentleman of the United States, will accompany her on this trip. Before attending the AI summit, Harris will give a speech on the subject and outline the Democratic administration's approach to it. Emhoff is also expected to participate in several events with civil society groups and young leaders focusing on science education, gender equality, and combating hate speech. Kristen Allen, Harris's spokesperson, stated that the goal of this gathering is a future where 'everyone is protected from the harms of AI and everyone can equally benefit from its advantages.' Governments around the world are striving to establish guidelines for AI as soon as possible. In addition to the US executive order, the European Union is also working on completing a comprehensive set of regulations targeting the most dangerous applications of this technology. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the UK, hopes to showcase the UK's important role regarding AI at this meeting. The summit will take place next week at Bletchley Park, a historic site in North London that was once a base for World War II 'codebreakers.' This building, which has been dubbed the 'spiritual home of modern computing,' housed teams that managed to break the Nazi 'Enigma' code and helped end the war. An exhibition from a library in Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing, the father of computer science and AI and a famous British codebreaker during World War II, worked (archive). China has also been invited to this summit. This comes as US and European officials have discussed collaborating with 'like-minded countries' to create protective barriers against AI. Sunak defended this invitation against criticisms that China should have been excluded, although he could not say with '100 percent certainty' whether Beijing would attend the meeting. He deemed the presence of all leading AI powers in the world necessary for a serious strategy and remarked on the invitation to China: 'This may not have been an easy task, but it was the right thing to do.'