Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of inviting China to participate in the global summit on Artificial Intelligence on national security.

The UK’s approach to China is to protect our institutions and infrastructure, align with partners and engage where it is in the UK’s national interest.

The opportunities of Artificial Intelligence are transformational, but the pace of development necessitates an urgent international conversation about significant risks. The AI Safety Summit will focus on international collaboration to identify and mitigate safety risks from frontier AI – including misuse leading to biological or cyber-attacks.

We cannot keep the UK public safe from the risks of AI if we exclude one of the leading nations in AI tech. We have therefore determined that it is in our national interest to invite China to the Summit where we will encourage a global approach to addressing safety risks in frontier AI which are inherently international in nature.