Privacy & Cybersecurity Law Blog

On November 1, 2023, 29 nations, including the U.S., the UK, the EU and China (full list available here), reached a ground-breaking agreement, known as the Bletchley Declaration. The Declaration sets forth a shared understanding of the opportunities and risks posed by AI and the need for governments to work together to meet the most significant challenges posed by the technology. The Declaration states  that there is an urgent need to understand and collectively manage the potential risks posed by AI to ensure the technology is developed and deployed in a safe, responsible way. The Declaration was signed at the AI Safety Summit 2023, held at Bletchley Park in the UK.

The Declaration sets forth the following agenda for addressing AI risks:

• “Identifying AI safety risks of shared concern, building a shared scientific and evidence-based understanding of these risks, and sustaining that understanding as capabilities continue to increase, in the context of a wider global approach to understanding the impact of AI in our societies”; and
• “Building respective risk-based policies across [the] countries to ensure safety in light of such risks, collaborating as appropriate while recognizing [the countries’] approaches may differ based on national circumstances and applicable legal frameworks. This includes, alongside increased transparency by private actors developing frontier AI capabilities, appropriate evaluation metrics, tools for safety testing, and developing relevant public sector capability and scientific research.”

As a next step, the Republic of Korea has agreed to co-host a mini virtual summit on AI in the next six months. France will then host the next in-person summit next fall.