Letter from London: Transatlantic Drift |
Photograph Source: Sgt. Benjamin Whitten – Public Domain
‘Just got back from London,’ comedian Toby Foster posted online last week in a rare but welcome moment of jocularity for the capital: ‘No one tried to nick my watch, no one mugged me, everyone in the shops spoke English, and most people smiled at me. It’s almost like X talks a load of rubbish. Best city in the world.’
If in the Dickens sense this is a tale of two cities as well as two or more continents, my excellent Afghan-Ukrainian friend Angelika Sharygina has just been in Paris for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action—formerly Safety—Summit at the Grand Palais. I’ve written about Angelika—an AI expert with a conscience—before. She tells me the shift from AI Safety to AI Action makes clear that AI is now affecting everyone everywhere. ‘One of the biggest concerns is the unprecedented accumulation of power in the hands of a few players,’ she warned me. ‘AI is being built, controlled, and deployed by a handful of actors, and without proper oversight.’ Her biggest fear is that this will lead to monopolised influence over information, elections, even critical infrastructure.
Angelika was nonetheless upbeat about Current AI, a public interest initiative apparently backed by $400m and with plans to raise $2.5bn. It was launched by French president Macron with support from the likes of Finland, France, Germany, Chile, India, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Slovenia and Switzerland. It basically wants to widen access to high-quality datasets, support open-source AI, and drive AI development in areas like healthcare and climate solutions. ‘In a major push to break Europe’s AI dependence on the US and Chinese giants,’ added Angelika.
On JD Vance, who was grumbling in Paris about Europeans being over-cautious with AI, before his later grumbles about everything else European in Munich, she brilliantly said: ‘The idea that regulation stifles innovation is outdated. The real issue isn’t over-regulation; it’s the growing power imbalance where a handful of companies dictate the future of AI.’
Elsewhere, the runes continue to........