IRIA News

The United Kingdom has unveiled the details of its defense-related artificial intelligence programs as it prepares to host the global summit on AI in London. The summit, hosted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, will see participation from several prominent world leaders and tech industry experts.

The meeting begins on November 1 at Bletchley Park — once the top-secret home of the World War Two Codebreakers. The global summit is a part of the UK’s ambition to expand collaboration with global tech partners to boost its tech and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Tech industry leaders, including Elong Musk, Meta’s chief AI scientist Prof Yann LeCun, and Sam Altman, the man behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are expected to participate in the event. 

The two-day (November 1-2, 2023) summit aims to address concerns over the rapid advancement of AI systems and security-related problems associated with them, such as the development of more deadly bio-weapons and more paralyzing cyberattacks.

Bletchley Park is privileged to have been chosen as the site of the first global AI Safety Summit, hosted by the UK Government.https://t.co/4RIhT0iQNx#BletchleyParkAI #AISafetySummit #AISummit #Summit #Colossus #Turing #ArtificialIntelligence pic.twitter.com/XNw5CIlVrc

— Bletchley Park (@bletchleypark) October 31, 2023

China accepts invitation to attend UK AI summit

There has been a lot of debate surrounding China’s participation in the global summit related to AI security as Western experts have contrasting opinions about China’s role in AI security.

Despite the ongoing tensions between the West and China, London extended an invitation to Beijing for its participation in the summit, which was accepted. “It is the case they’ve accepted, but we will wait to see everyone who actually turns up at the summit,” Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden told reporters.

UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently said that inviting China was the right thing to do, stressign that ”There can be no serious strategy for AI without at least trying to engage all of the world’s leading AI powers.”

Biden’s AI executive order

Parallel to the UK’s efforts to address AI security, U.S. President Joe Biden released an executive order that he termed ”the most significant actions ever taken by any government to advance the field of AI safety”.

According to a White House statement, the order includes requirements to “develop standards, tools, and tests to help ensure that AI systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy,” and to share relevant data about AI models with the U.S. government.

Britain’s AI-related defense program 

British Defense Ministry has unveiled two of its AI-related defense programs ahead of the summit. The ministry announced on October 31, 2023, that a beach landing exercise was organized in the English Channel off the coast of Hampshire in September. The exercise involved 130 personnel, 13 vessels, multiple unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), a light aircraft, and more than 50 cameras and sensors generating data to train AI algorithms and shape the development of new ethical AI technologies.

According to a defense ministry spokesperson, the exercise took place from 18 to 22 September and will help to “develop sensors and systems involved in object recognition and identification”.

During the landing exercise, personnel boarded and exited the vehicles in a variety of ways to generate data representative of different behavioral traits. The data was processed through AI powered system to generate the optimal scenario for beach landing. In one scenario, personnel acted as a coordinated military unit while in another, participants departed in a deliberately chaotic way to provide a wider data sample of human movement.

“Innovative, data-driven exercises like this demonstrate how AI can enhance our military capabilities, enabling us to respond more efficiently to the threats of today and tomorrow,” UK’s Minister for Defence Procurement, James Cartlidge, said.

Police departments in the United Kingdom have also started using innovative technology, such as facial recognition, to fight crime and apprehend offenders.

We’re also using AI to help make our streets safer – using facial recognition to help police officers remove criminals from our streets and allow them to work on other complex investigations.https://t.co/iQXyvFa9JT

— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) October 31, 2023

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently announced the creation of the Frontier AI Taskforce with al £100 million of funding, leading AI safety and research, creating jobs and contributing to economy. The UK government is also investing £2.5 billion in quantum computers.

In a speech delivered on October 26, 2023, at the Royal Society, Sunak shared his government’s approach to artificial intelligence (AI) and the responsibilities and opportunities associated with it. He expressed his optimism about the potential of AI to improve the lives of people and mentioned a visit to Moorfields Eye Hospital, where AI is used to diagnose various health conditions based on eye scans. This includes predicting heart attacks, strokes, and Parkinson’s disease.

UK using AI software to modernize helicopter support

The UK’s Defense Ministry also gave details on the introduction of a new AI-powered helicopter support software that would improve its maintenance and availability. The software program, known as Motherlode, is capable of analyzing historical data tailored to environmental and aircraft-specific conditions to more accurately predict equipment failures. ”By investing in the power of artificial intelligence, we are ensuring that our defensive assets are not only technologically superior, but also operate with precision, efficiency, and amplified safety,” according to James Cartlidge.

The AI-enabled software is set to be rolled out by the end of 2023 across all Royal Navy helicopters. The department is also exploring its use on other equipment such as like land-based vehicle Foxhound.

“This is just the beginning of the AI journey for the Fleet Air Arm. There are multiple use cases being explored, leveraging AI to enhance our data exploitation capabilities to maximize aircraft availability for frontline operations,” Cmdr. Nicholas Almond, who leads the 1710 Naval Air Squadron of the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm, said in the statement.