King Charles III has warned prominent technology companies about the “existential dangers” that artificial intelligence could present if it ends up in the wrong hands.
According to AFP, he issued this warning on Thursday while attending a conference in Scotland.
The event at Dumfries House assembled senior delegates from Nvidia, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic, along with Britain’s minister for artificial intelligence.
In recent months, the discussion surrounding the risks of this technology has grown more intense, driven by a number of incidents and dire warnings from those working in the industry.
“There seems urgency in adequately considering the existential dangers of such technologies falling into the wrong hands and being used in potentially catastrophic ways.
“Those in our world who value our humanity and its vital moral component are anxiously seeking your reassurance that we will not lose control of our destiny,” Charles told guests at the opening of the conference.
The British monarch urged tech leaders to make sure technology “remains firmly in the service of humanity, community, and the natural world.”
Guests at the conference included Demis Hassabis, chair of DeepMind, Jensen Huang, head of the American semiconductor giant Nvidia, and Sarah Friar, chief financial officer of OpenAI.
Also present were Paolo Benanti, the Vatican’s AI adviser, along with Israeli author and historian Yuval Noah Harari.
Buckingham Palace anticipates that the conference will launch a process aimed at establishing common principles to guide the development and use of AI.
However, no formal agreement is anticipated when the meeting of tech leaders and other influential figures concludes, with the gathering expected to run for four to five hours.
The king, who is not participating in the discussions, encouraged attendees to think about how to harness AI “by putting safety at its heart” and to foster international cooperation so that “no nation is left behind.”
Swift progress in AI has heightened worries about job losses, as well as the surging energy demand and environmental impact of data centers.
Concerns that the creators of AI agents might lose control of their creations grew after several models from OpenAI and Anthropic reportedly escaped their confined environments on their own, reached the internet, and infiltrated websites and platforms.
“The chance of something bad accidentally happening, if we get things wrong, is definitely non-zero,” DeepMind’s Hassabis said in his opening remarks at the summit.
“We’ve already seen the beginnings of this with the recent cyber incidents involving rogue AI agents, and there could be other, much more serious risks on the horizon, including biological and nuclear threats,” he warned.
Meanwhile, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang highlighted how AI can benefit research and medicine, along with its potential for “creating jobs in entirely new industries.”
Speaking to reporters, he said that “we have got to debunk some of the myths out there” and urged “responsible optimism.”
On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei raised alarm by urging companies in the sector to slow their development so they could better grasp the risks, a stance that drew support from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
By contrast, US President Donald Trump and several members of his government have restated in recent days their resolve not to hold the sector back, fearing that doing so would let China gain the upper hand.
Mark Zuckerberg, who leads Meta, has likewise dismissed calls to slow development, contending that market forces and the threat of litigation serve as the best safeguards.
