US and UK to work together in AI regulation, Biden terms it most serious tech challenge ever faced by humanity

In a sharp attack on China’s belt and road initiative (BRI), President Joe Biden has termed it a “debt and confiscation” programme and defended America’s economic strategy of encouraging domestic manufacturing and diversifying supply chains.

Speaking at a joint press appearance with visiting British prime minister Rishi Sunak in the White House on Thursday afternoon eastern time, Biden also said that artificial intelligence (AI) represented the most fundamental technological challenge ever posed in the history of human endeavour, and he was looking forward to the United Kingdom (UK)’s leadership in finding ways to regulate the domain. Sunak has made AI regulation a top international priority and convened an international summit on the subject later this year.

The US and UK have also issued a new Atlantic Declaration focused on economic, technological and defence partnership. In 1941, an Atlantic Charter between the US and UK formed the basis for their partnership during the Second World War and laid out a vision for the post-War order.

In recent months, Biden and Sunak have engaged regularly. They met in March in San Diego to operationalise AUKUS (the Australia-UK-US nuclear submarine deal), in Ireland in April during Biden’s visit to mark 25 years of the peace accord in the land where he traces his origins to, in Hiroshima in May during the G7 summit and now in Washington DC during Sunak’s bilateral visit. Both countries are working closely together in offering Ukraine military and diplomatic support in the war against Russia, and have increasing convergence on their positions on China and, in Sunak’s words, “the indivisibility of security” in the Euro-Atlantic and Pacific regions.

Explaining the importance of the Atlantic declaration, Sunak said, “Just as we collaborate to protect our national security, so must we increasingly do the same to protect our economic security on which our prosperity depends. Countries like China and Russia are willing to manipulate and exploit our openness, steal our intellectual property, use technology for authoritarian ends, or withdraw crucial resources like energy. They will not succeed.”

Biden also said that the US and UK will do more to prevent technologies that “are invented and developed in our countries from being used for “military or intelligence purposes by countries that do not share our values”. He claimed that China’s president Xi Jinping had asked him why the US was not transferring certain tech capabilities to Beijing. “And I said, very simply, ‘Because you are using them for weapons of mass destruction and intelligence intervention’. And I said, ‘If we can work out something on that, we’d have a very different relationship’.”

When asked if the US was returning to a form of economic protectionism, Biden said that the pandemic had made everyone realise the importance of supply chains.

“I decided that no longer would we rely on one center of support for any of the things that are needed for our economic growth…we are attracting capacity to build here in the United States to send product overseas, not the reverse.” He then spoke of US efforts to boost infrastructure in the global south, comparing it to BRI. “Well, the Belt and Road Initiative turns out to be a debt and confiscation program.”

On AI, Biden said, “I don’t think ever in the history of human endeavour has there been as fundamental potential technological change as is presented by artificial intelligence. It is staggering. It is staggering.. we are looking to Great Britain to help lead that effort, to figure out a way through this.”

Sunak warned that AI posed significant risks, and it was the duty of leaders to install guardrails against it.

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