South Korea prepares to convene its first trilateral summit with China and Japan since 2019, as UK Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan highlights the UK’s leadership in AI safety standards during the Seoul AI Summit.
South Korea will host its first trilateral summit with China and Japan in Seoul on Monday, resuming discussions that were last held in 2019. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are expected to attend, according to reports from the Yonhap news agency and other media outlets citing South Korea’s presidential office. This series of annual summits began in 2008 but has been on hiatus for the past four years.
In a related event, the UK Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan attended the Seoul AI Summit on May 22, 2024, where she highlighted the UK’s lead in forming safety standards for advanced artificial intelligence (AI). The UK’s AI Safety Institute, launched in Bletchley, has prompted the formation of similar institutes globally, including in South Korea, the US, Singapore, Japan, and France. These institutes aim to collaborate in creating comprehensive AI safety protocols comparable to the historic Montreal Protocol.
The summit attendees discussed the need for unified international efforts in AI model testing and regulation, with a follow-up meeting scheduled in Paris this autumn. Additional funding of £8.5 million for AI safety testing was announced by Donelan to support these initiatives. However, the summit faced criticism for its exclusion of civil society groups, focusing mainly on academia, government, and industry representatives.
