Latest news with #ParisAIActionSummit
Leaders
3 days ago
- Business
- Leaders
OECD Delegation Commends Saudi Arabia's School Evaluation Advancements
A delegation from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) concluded a visit to the headquarters of the Education and Training Evaluation Commission (ETEC) as part of an ongoing technical cooperation initiative. The visit focused on exchanging expertise and discussing technical aspects of learning outcomes assessment frameworks and school evaluation in the Kingdom's general education system. The OECD team praised ETEC's organizational development and its accomplishments in evaluating general education, highlighting the Commission's substantial and comprehensive progress despite the expansive scale of Saudi Arabia's education sector. Dr. Harold Hislop, head of the OECD expert team and former Chief Inspector at Ireland's Department of Education (2010–2020), commended the rapid and wide-reaching strides made by Saudi Arabia. He described ETEC's newly established school evaluation system as a significant milestone and an impressive achievement for the education sector. Related Topics : Saudi Arabia Poised for 3.8% Economic Growth in 2025: OECD Paris AI Action Summit: SDAIA Highlights Saudi Arabia as Comprehensive Governance Model Saudi Health Ministry Addresses Concerns Over X Disease Saudi Student Excels in Huawei Global Cloud Computing Competition Short link : Post Views: 55 Related Stories
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
U.K. drops AI safety focus and signs up Anthropic to help transform public services
The United Kingdom has signed a major deal with the U.S. firm Anthropic, and separately made a significant change to how it approaches AI safety. Less than two years ago, the British government announced the foundation of the U.K. AI Safety Institute (AISI), which aimed to tackle security risks like the use of AI to make chemical or biological weapons, and the potential of humanity losing control of a superintelligent AI. The institute also had a partial focus on AI's societal risks, like spreading misinformation and perpetuating bias. On Thursday, the government recast the organization as the AI Security Institute. As its new name suggests, the reborn AISI still explores some of those security risks. However, it's no longer keeping an eye on societal risks, and it no longer appears to be focusing on potential for AI running amok. To hammer home the change, the new AISI will feature a 'criminal misuse team' working together with the Home Office, the U.K.'s security ministry. The British government also said it will work with Anthropic to explore using AI to transform the country's public services and drive scientific research. This is a first for the government, but it is not an exclusive deal; the government said it will try to strike similar partnerships with other leading AI companies. 'We look forward to exploring how Anthropic's AI assistant Claude could help U.K. government agencies enhance public services, with the goal of discovering new ways to make vital information and services more efficient and accessible to U.K. residents,' Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement. No financial terms were mentioned. Anthropic's Economic Index, launched this week, will also come into play here. The index draws on anonymized conversations with Claude to infer how AI is being used across the economy, and the U.K. will use this information to 'adapt its workforce and innovation strategies for an AI-enabled future,' the government said. The AISI's revised mission appears to be part of the U.K.'s new strategy of falling into lockstep with President Donald Trump's in the U.S. Earlier this week, the U.K. caused some consternation in the AI community by refusing to sign the declaration emerging from the Paris AI Action Summit. The U.S. also declined to sign it. On the surface, the U.S.'s reasoning was down to a desire to avoid excessive regulation of AI—the declaration referred to international frameworks and governance—but many saw the document's references to inclusive AI and reducing digital divides as a guarantee that Trump's anti-DEI administration wouldn't sign them. The U.K.'s refusal was more of a surprise; its government cited concerns about 'global governance' and national security. A few weeks previously, one of Trump's first acts as returning president was to rescind President Joe Biden's 2023 executive order on providing guardrails for the technology, including in areas affecting civil liberties. U.S. Vice President JD Vance told the summit this week that he was not in Paris 'to talk about AI safety, which was the title of the conference a couple of years ago,' but rather to talk about 'AI opportunity.' His message was heavy on avoiding being risk-averse when it comes to AI. On Thursday, U.K. tech secretary Peter Kyle struck a very similar note. 'The changes I'm announcing today represent the logical next step in how we approach responsible AI development—helping us to unleash AI and grow the economy,' he said. 'The main job of any government is ensuring its citizens are safe and protected, and I'm confident the expertise our Institute will be able to bring to bear will ensure the U.K. is in a stronger position than ever to tackle the threat of those who would look to use this technology against us.' The government stressed in its statement that the AISI 'will not focus on bias or freedom of speech,' and AISI chair Ian Hogarth insisted that 'the Institute's focus from the start has been on security.' However, alongside that security focus, the AISI has also explicitly addressed societal issues like the potential for AI to manipulate public opinion, or to reinforce societal biases when used in transport or emergency services systems. These are things that former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tasked it to do, and it even invited grant applications covering these very topics. At the time of publication, the government had not replied to a question about who might monitor AI bias issues now that the AISI would no longer do so. Fortune has also asked Hogarth why the AISI no longer focuses on societal risks and the potential for future AI getting out of control. This story was originally featured on
Al-Ahram Weekly
09-02-2025
- Business
- Al-Ahram Weekly
Trump's AI ambition and China's DeepSeek overshadow an AI summit in Paris - Tech
The geopolitics of artificial intelligence will be in focus at a major summit in France where world leaders, executives and experts will hammer out pledges on guiding the development of the rapidly advancing technology. It's the latest in a series of global dialogues around AI governance, but one that comes at a fresh inflection point as China's buzzy and budget-friendly DeepSeek chatbot shakes up the industry. US Vice President JD Vance, making his first trip abroad since taking office, will attend the Paris AI Action Summit starting Feb. 10, while China's President Xi Jinping will be sending his special envoy, signaling high stakes for the meeting. Here's a breakdown: Summit basics Heads of state and top government officials, tech bosses and researchers are gathering in Paris for the two-day summit cohosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The event aims to address how to harness artificial intelligence's potential so that it benefits everyone, while containing the technology's myriad risks. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is attending, along with officials and CEOs from 80 countries, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who attended the inaugural 2023 summit at former codebreaking base Bletchley Park in England, and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng have been invited, but it's unclear if either will attend. Panel talks and workshops at the Grand Palais venue on Monday will be followed by a dinner at the Elysee presidential palace for world leaders and CEOs. Leaders and company bosses are expected to give speeches at Tuesday's closing session. What's at stake? More than two years after ChatGPT's debut, generative AI continues to make astounding advances at breakneck speed. The technology that powers all-purpose chatbots is transforming many aspects of life with its ability to spit out high-quality text, images or video, or carry out complex tasks. The 2023 summit in the UK resulted in a non-binding pledge by 28 nations to tackle AI risks. A follow-up meeting hosted by South Korea last year secured another pledge to set up a network of public AI safety institutes to advance research and testing. AI safety is still on the agenda in Paris, with an expert group reporting back on general purpose AI's possible extreme dangers. But this time organizers are expanding the discussion to more countries, and widening the debate to a range of other AI-related topics. Like previous editions, this summit won't produce any binding regulation. 'The summit comes at a time when many are trying to position themselves in the international competition,' Macron told reporters, according to La Provence newspaper. 'It's about establishing the rules of the game. AI cannot be the Wild West.' The deliverables Organizers are working on getting countries to sign a joint political declaration gathering commitments for more ethical, democratic and environmentally sustainable AI, according to Macron's office. But it's unclear whether the US would agree to such a measure. Another big goal is securing an agreement for a public-interest partnership for AI. Paris seeks to raise 2.5 billion euros ($2.6 billion) for the public-private partnership involving governments, businesses and philanthropic groups that will provide open-source access to databases, software and other tools for 'trusted' AI actors, Macron's office said. Macron's team wants to shift the focus away from the race to develop better-than-human artificial intelligence through sheer computing power and, instead, open up access to data that can help AI solve problems like cancer or long COVID. 'We now have this incredible opportunity to figure out not only how we should mitigate the potential harms from artificial intelligence, but also how we can ensure that it's used to improve people's lives,' said Martin Tisné, the summit's envoy for public interest AI. Trump's team US President Donald Trump has spoken of his desire to make the US the 'world capital of artificial intelligence' by tapping its oil and gas reserves to feed the energy-hungry technology. Meanwhile, he has moved to withdraw the US, again, from the Paris climate agreement and revoked former President Joe Biden's executive order for AI guardrails. Trump is replacing it with his own AI policy designed to maintain America's global leadership by reducing regulatory barriers and building AI systems free of 'ideological bias.' The US position might undermine any joint communique, said Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at the Eurasia Group. 'Trump is against the very idea of global governance,' Reiners said. 'It's one thing to get countries to agree that AI should have guardrails and that AI safety is something worth caring about. But they've widened the scope to talk about the future of work and the environment and inclusivity and so on, a whole range of concepts. So it's hard to imagine getting a widespread agreement on such a broad range of subjects.' China's role Chinese leader Xi is sending Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, who's been elevated to the role of Xi's special representative. It's a big step up from the 2023 Bletchley meeting, when the Chinese government sent the vice minister of science and technology. It signifies that Xi wants China to play a bigger role in global AI governance as Trump pulls back, Reiners said. DeepSeek 's release last month stunned the world because of its ability to rival Western players like ChatGPT. It also escalated the wider geopolitical showdown between Beijing and Washington over tech supremacy. Trump said DeepSeek was a 'wake-up call' for the US tech industry and his AI advisor David Sacks accused DeepSeek of training its model on stolen OpenAI data. The DeepSeek chatbot app now faces investigations, and in some cases, bans in the US and a number of other countries over privacy and security concerns. Yet the rise of DeepSeek, which built its open source AI model at a fraction of the cost and with fewer chips, also puts China's interests in line with France's. French organizers said 'the summit aims at promoting an ambitious French and European AI strategy" as advances in the sector have been led by the US and China. Macron hopes to make room for others, including French startup Mistral, which also uses an open source AI model. 'DeepSeek is being seen as a kind of vindication of this idea that you don't have to necessarily invest hundreds of billions of dollars in in chips and data centers,' Reiners said. Transatlantic tensions Another showdown could involve Brussels, which has long been a thorn in the side of US-based Big Tech companies, cracking down with antitrust penalties against the likes of Google, Apple and Meta. Trump lashed out at last month's World Economic Forum with 'very big complaints' about the EU's multibillion-dollar fines, calling them a tax on American companies. More recently, the EU's artificial intelligence regulation has met resistance from the companies. The European Union recently unveiled a non-binding "code of practice' for its AI Act but Meta's top lobbyist said the company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, won't sign up. The EU guidelines, intended to standardize how the AI Act's regulations are applied across the 27-nation bloc, are 'unworkable' and the continent's regulatory environment is 'pushing Europe to the sidelines,' Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan told a Brussels event. Short link:
