No 10 plays down worries about Sunak's AI safety summit having few top leaders

No one is yet quite sure who will attend or what, if anything, will be decided, but Rishi Sunak's government is adamant that next week's AI safety summit will be a vital first step towards getting to grips with a subject that is moving at a pace even the experts cannot fully comprehend. Understandable worries inside No 10 that the Israel-Gaza war could mean a summit lacking in world leaders have eased slightly with confirmation that the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, will attend. In another early victory for the UK government, a series of leading AI companies, including OpenAI and Google DeepMind, have released their safety policies after a request from the technology secretary, Michelle Donelan. However, it remains to be seen how many top-level figures will travel to Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, on Wednesday or Thursday – and if anyone at all from China will attend. The gathering at the country house, which was the base for second world war code-breaking, is a personal project for Sunak, whose speech about AI on Thursday warned about the potentially existential threats posed by the technology while also trying to reassure the public that they need not worry.