AI Seoul Summit

Debate between Saqib Bhatti and Mark Logan

Thursday 23rd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Saqib Bhatti]

My hon. Friend makes a hugely important point. I refer him to what I said earlier. It was insightful for me to see how transformative AI can be in health. When I visited Aival, for example, I gained insight into the complexity of installing AI as a testing bed for different machines depending on who has manufactured and calibrated them. The regulator will play a huge role, as he can imagine, whether on heart disease, radiotherapy, or DeepMind’s work in developing AlphaFold.

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister on all his enthusiastic work on AI. In his statement, he referred to the frontier AI safety commitments, and 16 companies were mentioned. One of those was Zhipu AI of Tsinghua Daxue—Tsinghua University in China—which is, of course, one of the four new AI tigers of China. How important is the work that the Minister is doing to ensure China is kept in the tent when it comes to the safety and regulation of AI, so that we do not end up with balkanisation when it comes to AI?

[Saqib Bhatti]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. I will not try to pronounce the name of that university or that company; what I will say is that AI does not recognise borders, so it is really important for China to be in the room, having those conversations. What those 16 companies signed up to was a world first, by the way: companies from the US, the United Arab Emirates, China and, of course, the UK signed that commitment. This is the first time that they have agreed in writing that they will not deploy or develop models that test the thresholds. Those thresholds will be divined at the AI action summit in France, so my hon. Friend is exactly right that we need a collaborative global approach.