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The Story: UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak does not plan on enacting AI regulation any time soon.

The PM wants to avoid hindering innovation of the technology, especially until experts have the chance to discern the extent of its wide-ranging capabilities. He said, “How can we write laws that make sense for something that we don’t yet fully understand?"

However, that doesn’t mean the UK plans to avoid the topic of AI. The opposite is true as Sunak just announced the creation of an AI safety body that will be tasked with discovering the extent of the abilities and the threats the tech poses. The Prime Minister says the findings from this safety body will be made available to everyone.

Addressing the Royal Society, the UK's academy of sciences in London, Sunak warned that they could not, quote, “get this wrong,” as AI is a powerful tool that can be wielded for good or for evil.

It has already proven capable of helping bad actors to create chemical and biological weapons, enable cyberattacks, facilitate the dissemination of disinformation, and support child sex abuse. In the worst case, “humanity could lose control of AI completely,” cautioned the Prime Minister.

Sunak quickly offered a reassuring note, though, adding that, quote, “this is not a risk people need to be losing sleep over right now.” He followed that by saying, quote, “the UK is doing far more than any other country to keep you safe.”

Regulation continues to be a hot button discussion in the United Kingdom and in the United States, but at least at the federal level, it has yet to move past being just that, a discussion.

The Expert Take: Hon Weng Chong, founder and CEO of Cortical Labs, believes preserving innovative freedom is not the only incentive governments have to be slow to regulate AI:

Chong’s biggest fear in postponing AI regulation lies in the damage he sees it having on children. “I think the vast majority of users of ChatGPT actually are school children using it for homework. It’s kind of similar to how we regulate tobacco, alcohol, porn, and all these things to children. I think there should also be some discourse around the use of these LLMs.”