Government launches new taskforce to block risk of

A new government task force of experts will attempt to slow down the tech race to “God-like” Artificial Intelligence.  

Until now, the UK has been focusing on more pedestrian AI applications, such as providing mental health chatbots to put users in touch with professionals,  analysing sexual crime convictions and predicting welfare fraud.

But now the independent body assigned in 2018 to oversee this governance, the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation’s (CDEI), has been scrapped. In its place is the more robust Frontier AI Task force.

Working under the umbrella of the newly-formed Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) , it has been given a £100m budget to face down longer-term and potentially nightmarish developments.

PM Rishi Sunak has already committed to making Britain a world leader in AI governance and will hold a global AI safety summit in Bletchley Park on November 1.

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And recent advances, such as the release of ChatGPT, have prompted a shift of emphasis.

The focus now will include potential cyber threats from innovations in writing software to biosecurity threats.

That shift was echoed on Friday by deputy PM Oliver Dowden, who warned the UN General Assembly that “global regulation is falling behind current advances” in artificial intelligence, and called for a “new form of multilateralism” to manage AI or risk destabilising the world order.

The new task force boasts a coterie of talent, from Turing Prize Laureate Yoshua Bengio and GCHQ Director Anne Keast-Butler to AI experts Yarin Gal from Oxford University and Cambridge’s David Kreuger.

It is being led by Ian Hogarth, a venture capitalist who warned earlier this year of the need to “slow down the race to God-like AI.”

Last night the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) said that the CDEI  had only ever been appointed “on a fixed term basis”.

Hans Horan of the Proximities strategic risk group, said: “The names on this task force will make it more possible for the UK to become the AI hub which Rishi Sunak wants.

“But ultimately, it will take cooperation with other allies such as the US to form a western block against the dominance of Chinese AI and Chinese rules.”

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