October 26, 2023 AI Safety Summit Diary: the lead-up Author(s): Gina Neff Prof. Gina Neff and fellow panelists at the Royal Society on Wednesday 25 October | Credit: Gina Neff In this first diary entry, Prof Gina Neff writes about her road to the AI Safety Summit. Over the next 10 days, I will provide an insight into the conversations and themes emerging around this important event, through my AI Safety Summit Diary. The AI Safety Summit may be a nearly a week away, but organisations are preparing in earnest. Last week, I joined a gathering at British Ambassador’s residence in Dublin, bringing together AI experts from both Ireland and the UK to deliberate on the objectives of the UK’s AI Safety Summit scheduled for November. This was a brilliant opportunity to meet with AI professionals, policymakers and academics to discuss this topic in Ireland. We need conversations like this to ensure that responsible and trustworthy AI can power benefits for everyone. I also spoke with Mark Kelly for the AI Ireland podcast, to discuss the relationship between technology, society, and democracy. My research focuses on the effects of the rapid expansion of our digital information environment on workers and workplaces and in our everyday lives. Science x AI Safety As the Summit gets closer, the number of events has increased. My theme this week so far has been the relationship between science and AI safety. Yesterday, I joined the UK Government and senior scientists from a wide range of disciplines at the Royal Society to identify potential AI safety risks across scientific fields. I sat with Viscount Camrose, Minister for AI and Intellectual Property, Ottoline Leyser, Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, UKRI Chief Executive, Prof. Frank Kelly of the University of Cambridge and Areeq Chowdhury, Head of Policy at the Royal society, to imagine the risks AI could pose to science. I was delighted to join this discussion. The UK has a lot of talent in this space, both in the arts, social sciences and sciences, and our greatest strength will come from working together. Following this event, I travelled to the Alan Turing Institute for an incredible event organised by Marion Oswald on live facial recognition with the London Metropolitan Police. This follows the release of our report in 2022 that examined the police use of facial recognition technology in the UK. At this event, our own Dr Ann Kristin Glenster presented her forthcoming framework for regulating police use of emerging technologies, getting very useful stakeholder feedback on our policy work. I then had a quick chat with Prof. Dame Muffy Calder, my collaborator on Responsible AI UK (RAI UK), planning our forthcoming working groups. RAI UK brings together researchers from across the four nations of the UK to understand how we should shape the development of AI to benefit people, communities and society. Then it was straight back to the Royal Society for a meeting with our brilliant researcher at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, Stefanie Felsberger ,who had spend the afternoon observing the policy workshop taking place. This workshop, Red teaming LLMs for resilience to scientific disinformation, brought together graduate students to test the efficacy of guardrails for AI-generated disinformation about climate change and COVID-19. Alongside the opportunities presented by AI, numerous risks have captured public attention from privacy concerns to research integrity, and the potential of an ‘existential threat’. In the evening, I spoke at a panel discussion at the Royal Society exploring the varied risks for science and society associated with the development of advanced artificial intelligence. Being held a week before the AI Safety Summit, the panel discussed what they consider to be key AI safety risks which should be prioritised by policymakers, the scientific community, and the general public. This panel brought together expert voices to discuss the short-, medium-, and long-term risks associated with the development of advanced artificial intelligence. AI safety isn’t just a challenge for the future and it isn’t just a technical problem. These are issues that both employers and workers are facing now, and they need the help from researchers, policy makers and civil society to build the capacity to get this right for society. And that was just Wednesday… About Prof. Gina Neff Read all posts from my AI Safety Summit Diary: Wednesday 25 October – AI Safety Summit Diary: the lead-up Thursday 26 October – AI Safety Summit Diary: A Prime Ministerial visit Monday 30 October- AI Safety Summit Diary: How do we ensure responsible AI? Tuesday 31 October – AI Safety Summit Diary: The Summit approaches… Wednesday 1 November – AI Safety Summit Diary: The here and now: The impact of AI on our lives Thursday 2 November – AI Safety Summit Diary: What’s next after the AI Safety Summit? Friday 3 November – AI Safety Summit Diary: How do we build a responsible and trustworthy international AI ecosystem?