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The Story: Last week, business figures like Elon Musk and Sam Altman and political leaders like Kamala Harris attended a historic two-day global AI Summit in Bletchley Park, England.

The UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hosted leaders from nearly thirty countries in what the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace considers to be a “remarkable achievement” in diplomacy.

Members of the summit, including leaders from AI companies and delegates from countries like the US and China, agreed to endorse a “landmark” voluntary accord, allowing governments worldwide to assess their most recent models for potential social and national security threats. Among the companies were OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, Amazon, Mistral, Microsoft, and Meta.

During a live conversation with Elon Musk, PM Sunak asked the owner of X what he thought of the landmark initiative. Musk joked that it “will be annoying, that’s true” but shared his support for it because “we’ve learnt over the years that having a referee is a good thing.”

To many’s surprise, China’s representative actually agreed that China was united with the rest of the members in common values of “democracy” and “freedom” in regard to the threats AI could pose. 28 nations joined in making broad commitments to work together against the risks of artificial intelligence.

During the summit, US vice president Kamala Harris held a press conference in London. According to Harris, the US plans to make its own rules for AI. She said, “Let us be clear: when it comes to AI, America is a global leader. It is American companies that lead the world in AI innovation. It is America that can catalyze global action and build global consensus in a way that no other country can.”

Time will tell if the political and tech leaders in attendance at the UK summit will actually keep the commitments they’ve made.

Expert Take: Bradley Tusk, founder and CEO of Tusk Venture Partners, doesn’t understand why Kamala Harris believes the US is prepared to regulate AI effectively: “I think what [Kamala Harris] said is laughable. Ironically, if you look at internet and tech regulation to date, it’s Europe that has done a much better job of it. Been far more proactive, far more thoughtful. Here we are talking about regulating AI when we haven’t even figured out how to regulate internet 2.0.”

Tusk continues:

The CEO of Tusk Venture Partners is also not convinced China’s representative has any pure motives in agreeing to common values with other members. Tusk says, “I think China is saying this because AI is a threat to their power. China is an autocracy. In an autocratic system, anything that gives power to people who [aren’t] the government is scary. It’s the same reason why they banned cryptocurrency… they’re doing it simply to preserve their own power, nothing else.”

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