TIME100 Impact Dinner London: AI Leaders Discuss Responsibility, Regulation, and Text as a 'Relic of the Past'

On Wednesday, luminaries in the field of AI gathered at Serpentine North, a former gunpowder store turned exhibition space, for the inaugural TIME100 Impact Dinner London. Following a similar event held in San Francisco last month, the dinner convened influential leaders, experts, and honorees of TIME's 2023 and 2024 100 Influential People in AI lists--all of whom are playing a role in shaping the future of the technology. Following a discussion between TIME's CEO Jessica Sibley and executives from the event's sponsors--Rosanne Kincaid-Smith, group chief operating officer at Northern Data Group, and Jaap Zuiderveld, Nvidia's VP of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa--and after the main course had been served, attention turned to a panel discussion. The panel featured TIME 100 AI honorees Jade Leung, CTO at the U.K. AI Safety Institute, an institution established last year to evaluate the capabilities of cutting-edge AI models; Victor Riparbelli, CEO and co-founder of the UK-based AI video communications company Synthesia; and Abeba Birhane, a cognitive scientist and adjunct assistant professor at the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin, whose research focuses on auditing AI models to uncover empirical harms. Moderated by TIME senior editor Ayesha Javed, the discussion focused on the current state of AI and its associated challenges, the question of who bears responsibility for AI's impacts, and the potential of AI-generated videos to transform how we communicate.