G7 leaders set for ‘substantial conversation’ on future of AI

Leaders of the G7 group of nations will hold a “substantial conversation” on the future of artificial intelligence (AI), the US national security advisor has said.

Jake Sullivan said that US president Joe Biden would report at the summit on talks held recently in the White House with some of the major companies involved in developing AI.

He said the president would discuss “efforts by the Biden administration to ensure that we are helping facilitate the opportunities of AI while managing the risks in a responsible way that is coordinated closely with the advanced democracies of the world”.

The G7 summit of industrialised nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the United States – is taking place this weekend in Hiroshima, the city in Japan destroyed by the US nearly 80 years ago in an atomic bomb blast.

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Mr Sullivan said Mr Biden would not be issuing an apology on behalf of the United States for the use of the atomic bomb.

“The president won’t be making a statement at the Peace Memorial Park (in the city). He will be participating with the other G7 leaders in a wreath-laying and a few other events. But this is not, from his perspective, a bilateral moment. This is him, as one of the G7 leaders, coming to pay respects and -- respects both for history but also respects to (Japanese) prime minister (Fumio) Kishida, who of course is from Hiroshima.”

Speaking at a briefing on his way to Japan, Mr Sullivan said the summit would also discuss Ukraine, China and clean energy.

‘Total faith’

Meanwhile, Mr Sullivan said he had “total faith” in the US secret service after an embarrassing incident last month when an intruder managed to get into his house in Washington without being detected.

Mr Sullivan would not comment on the issue on Wednesday but said the secret service did “a remarkable job every day as professionals protecting me”.

It emerged this week that Mr Sullivan had confronted a man who had entered his home in the early hours of one morning in late April. The man did not appear to have had any intention to harm the national security advisor – who is one of the top aides to President Biden. The man left when asked to do so by Mr Sullivan.

Mr Sullivan has a 24-hour security detail. However, secret service agents outside Mr Sullivan’s home were not aware of the break-in until he told them about the incident.

Mr Sullivan said that the G7 summit would see “alignment and convergence” by member nations “around the fundamental principles of our approach to the People’s Republic of China”.

Mr Sullivan also said the leaders at the summit would talk about the state of play on the battlefield in Ukraine.

“There will be discussions about the state of play on sanctions and the steps that the G7 will collectively commit to on enforcement in particular, making sure that we are shutting down evasion networks, closing loopholes in the sanctions so that the impact is amplified and magnified in the -- in the months ahead.”

He said the US would “have a package of sanctions associated with a G7 statement that will centre on this enforcement issue”.

Mr Sullivan also said a far-reaching statement agreed between the US and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen recently in Washington on approaches to clean energy would “be taken out to the G7 as a whole.”

“”And we believe that the work we will do together in terms of deployment of capital to ensure clean energy technologies are built out -- and not just in all of our countries, but globally - and the establishment of diversified, secure, resilient supply chains from critical minerals, to batteries, electric vehicles, and more -- that you will see a degree of convergence on this that, from our perspective, can continue the conversion of the Inflation Reduction Act from a source of friction into a source of cooperation and strength between the United States and our G7 partners. "