King Charles to press tech leaders on AI safety at Scotland summit

The U.K.'s King Charles is set to press senior leaders from Nvidia , OpenAI and Anthropic on AI safety at a summit in Scotland.

The event on Thursday will focus on how AI can be harnessed to benefit society and the natural world and will feature discussions around a shared set of principles for developing the technology, according to Buckingham Palace.

"The development of AI – its substance and its pace – are both intriguing and deeply concerning in equal measure," the king will say at the gathering, according to excerpts of a speech he is to deliver, shared with CNBC.

"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 will also host senior representatives from Google DeepMind, the tech giant's internal AI lab, as well as the U.K. AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, and other attendees convened by the King's Trust, the King's Foundation and the Sustainable Markets Initiative.

The King will ask the participants about harnessing the power of AI with safety "at its heart" and building international cooperation and consensus to achieve this, the Palace said.

"The decisions taken at this formative time will shape the world inherited by future generations," Charles will add. "And so, the task before you is not merely to advance technology, but to ensure that it remains firmly in the service of humanity, community and the natural world."

The king previously delivered virtual remarks at the U.K.'s AI Safety Summit in 2023, in which he said "we are witnessing one of the greatest technological leaps in history of human endeavour."

The AI safety debate has ramped up in the past two weeks, with tech chiefs including OpenAI's Sam Altman, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis and Elon Musk showing rare agreement in calling for a slowdown in developing the technology and regulatory oversight.