U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt defends China’s invitation to AI summit

The U.K. will invite China to participate only in limited portions of an artificial intelligence summit planned for later this year amid hesitation from the U.S. and other allies, U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt told POLITICO Tech.

“We're not going to invite China to every single part of the summit," Hunt said, as he defended the decision to include Beijing despite widespread concerns about its use of AI technology for surveillance and suppression. He added that British officials intend “to be very open” about practices that “we don’t consider to be acceptable.”

“If you're trying to create structures that make AI something that overall is a net benefit to humanity, then you can't just ignore the second-biggest economy in the world,” Hunt said in an interview that will air Wednesday. “That doesn't mean that you make any kind of compromises with your values but sometimes dialogue can be beneficial.”

The summit, announced in June by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, is a U.K.-led effort to convene global tech leaders — and to position a post-Brexit nation in the center of the global debate about AI safety. Separate from both the EU and the U.S. regulatory conversations, the U.K. summit got a key endorsement from President Joe Biden, though Biden himself is reported not to be attending.

POLITICO previously reported that U.S. and EU officials would prefer China not be involved in the event, though National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson later said “the United States is fine with China attending the summit.”

Hunt’s remarks come as he is set to begin a tour of tech hubs along the U.S. West Coast on Wednesday that will include stops in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles for meetings with the CEOs of Amazon, Microsoft and Google, among other major American players. He will also host a roundtable with video game companies, including Activision Blizzard, which has struggled to win U.K approval for its acquisition by Microsoft.

The U.K. aims to build on its existing startup community, which Hunt said is home to the most ventures in Europe valued over $1 billion, and ultimately become “as big as the mothership” Silicon Valley itself, he said. It plans to get there, in part, by striking a balance between regulation-heavy Europe and regulation-light U.S.

But some of the U.K.’s regulatory proposals, such as new digital competition rules, have garnered pushback from Big Tech firms. Investors have balked at perceived overreach by the country's antitrust regulator, which has derailed several Big Tech acquisitions in recent years. Meanwhile, Apple and Meta-owned WhatsApp have also signaled they would shutter services in the country over rules they say threaten user privacy.

“We will be very honest with the tech giants that I meet that we want a pro-innovation regulatory environment and that means an environment that works for thriving new startups and challengers,” Hunt said.

The U.K. specifically aims to plant a flag as a world leader in artificial intelligence. It’s already home to pioneering AI company DeepMind, which is owned by Google, and to a burgeoning hub of research and development in the field, along with other disciplines like life sciences and biotechnology, Hunt said, which he intended to use in his sales pitch to U.S. tech leaders.

“What I'll really be saying is, ‘Look, this is an incredibly exciting period in terms of tech development and we want to be a smart partner to you as you work out your expansion plans,’” Hunt told POLITICO Tech.

China’s likely participation in the November AI summit has been a source of tension for weeks. POLITICO first reported in late August that Beijing was likely to be invited and U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly confirmed China’s involvement on Tuesday.

Hunt said including China is necessary if democratic nations hope to wield any influence over President Xi Jinping’s AI practices and avoid dividing the globe into different regulatory regimes for the rapidly evolving technology — a division that already exists with the internet as China has exerted increasing control.

“We recognize that the free-world democracies will want to go on a different journey when it comes to AI regulation, because we have different concerns about privacy and we will reflect that in the way that we go forward,” Hunt said.

“But there is a bigger question about China, which we all have to be honest about,” he continued. “China, despite the many things that we disagree with in that regime, is not going to go away. And the choice we have is, do we try and engage constructively where we can?”

Vincent Manancourt and Annie Rees contributed to this report.

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