British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently announced that Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic — three tech outfits widely considered the global industry leaders in generative AI technologies — have agreed to provide the United Kingdom with early access to their AI models.London Tech Week, an event described by organizers as “a global celebration of tech, uniting the most innovative thinkers and talent of tomorrow in a week-long festival.
He made the comment while explaining a three-part plan to ensure AI systems in the U.K. are deployed in a safe and secure manner. The first step, per a transcript of the speech, is to perform cutting-edge safety research: “We’re working with the frontier labs - Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic. And I’m pleased to announce they’ve committed to give early or priority access to models for research and safety purposes to help build better evaluations and help us better understand the opportunities and risks of these systems.”
The prime minister went on to explain that the second step of the U.K.’s plan is the recognition that AI, as a technology, doesn’t “respect traditional national borders,” thus necessitating the formation of a global task force. Finally, the third step, per Sunak, is to invest in both AI and quantum to “seize the extraordinary potential of AI to improve people’s lives.” He cited recent investments in the amounts of $1.125 billion and $2.75 billion, for compute and quantum technologies, respectively, as steps the U.K. had already taken towards accomplishing this goal.It remains unclear at this time exactly what form of “early or priority” access the U.K. government will obtain or when such access will be afforded.