Sunak the influencer: How the UK’s AI summit surprised the skeptics

BLETCHLEY PARK, England — As Rishi Sunak lined up for a photo-op at Bletchley Park on Thursday alongside world leaders and tech execs while the sky drizzled outside, you could forgive him for feeling smug.

In the weeks and months leading up to the summit, the British PM had faced a barrage of criticism over the event: Rights campaigners didn’t like the laser focus on unrealized catastrophic risks; diplomats grumbled it risked taking away from existing initiatives, like at the G7.

But as the curtain closed on the two-day summit at Bletchley Park, the home of the U.K.’s World War II codebreakers, it was difficult to see this as anything other than a coup for Britain’s under-fire leader.

By the time proceedings were wrapping up on a drab Thursday evening, he’d managed to get almost 30 countries — including the U.S. and China — to sign a shared communiqué outlining the risks, set up a new global network of AI researchers, and secured a landmark agreement to allow governments to get under the bonnet of the most advanced forms of the emerging tech. Not to mention the prospect of national capitals lining up to take the baton from Britain to host subsequent AI safety summits.

“This summit and the future summits that have been announced in France and South Korea will be steps in the right direction where we can get a much better understanding of how we can harness AI for good and mitigate the risks that do exist,” said Marion Messmer, senior research fellow at the international affairs think tank Chatham House.

Indeed, in briefings in and around the summit across the two days, governments praised Sunak for getting the ball rolling on more substantive international cooperation in tackling AI.

"This is a big positive achievement for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak," said French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire of the summit on Thursday evening. "It’s a key milestone in the definition of fair and effective regulation of artificial intelligence."

Last-minute scramble

It hadn’t always looked that way.

As the summit crept closer, and even as Sunak’s summit sherpas — G7 veteran Jonathan Black and the sandy-haired venture capitalist Matt Clifford — crisscrossed the planet drumming up support, the lack of star names on the guestlist had started to become a headache for Team Sunak, who were batting off almost weekly headlines of “snubs” from world leaders.

Allies were one thing. U.S. President Joe Biden had been an early no-show but had compensated by promising his veep, Kamala Harris. Others proved less obliging. France had initially wanted to send just a junior tech minister — who sat vaping on calls with the organizing team. They eventually agreed to send Finance Minister Le Maire too, after pressure from the Brits.

But it was the Chinese the Brits were particularly anxious to secure. Despite the controversy that surrounded their presence, it offered the PM a chance to pull off the diplomatic coup of getting fierce geopolitical rivals Washington and Beijing sitting around the table talking about one of the most pressing issues of the day.

It was a close-run thing.

“Right up to the last minute we weren’t sure if the Chinese would come,” said one U.K. official close to summit planning, granted anonymity to discuss closed-door scenes. “The team were literally monitoring flights departing Beijing all day Monday.”

Once the Chinese delegation had taken off, they dared to hope. “When we knew the Chinese were in the air, we knew that getting the U.S. and them signing the communiqué was close,” said the official.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo taking to the stage on Wednesday morning alongside Wu Zhaohui, China’s vice minister of science, was an early crowning moment for Sunak’s summit.

“The fact that the prime minister was able to get both China and the U.S. to share a stage and co-sign a statement on frontier AI risks is a major achievement in itself. Both the geopolitics and domestic politics here are so fraught, and it took real creativity and legwork to make this happen,” said Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In what felt like an ‘I-told-you-so’ moment in his closing address on Thursday, Sunak cheered that unlikely deal.

“Some said we shouldn’t even invite China. Others said that we could never get an agreement with them. Both were wrong,” Sunak crowed. “A serious strategy for AI safety has to begin with engaging all the world’s leading AI powers, and all of them have signed the Bletchley Park communiqué.”

The announcement on Wednesday that South Korea and France would take the baton from Sunak in holding AI safety summits would have also felt like sweet vindication for the British PM’s decision to hold one in the first place.

“Rishi always pulls it off,” said Britain’s Deputy PM Oliver Dowden.

Gian Volpicelli and Laurie Clarke contributed reporting.