Sunak and Biden vs AI
Rishi Sunak is heading stateside for his first ever bilateral talks with US President Joe Biden in Washington.
During the two-day trip – his fifth meeting with Biden since taking up residence in Downing Street – Sunak wants to discuss security in its broadest sense.
Unsurprisingly, the leaders will look at joint strategies to mitigate the threat of Russia and China. Yet Sunak is keen to focus talks on another slightly different sort of threat, albeit a topical one: mitigating the risks posed by Artificial Intelligence.
Amid ever-growing warnings from experts in the field about the technology’s potentially devastating future impact, Sunak is gearing up to argue that Britain can play a leading role in AI regulation. He is expected to sound out Biden on his mission to create a global AI watchdog, headquartered in London, as well as his plans to host an international AI summit with like-minded allies in the UK this autumn.
On a more traditional security topic, Sunak is likely to stress defence secretary Ben Wallace’s suitability to replace Jens Stoltenberg as the next NATO general secretary. Stoltenberg is due to step down at the end of September but Biden is yet to name his preferred replacement candidate.
Security aside, the PM, who is meeting with some of America’s biggest business leaders on Thursday, will also want to secure some decent investment, perhaps partly to compensate for the fact that a full blown trade deal with the US appears to be off the table for now.
Additionally, international trade minister Nigel Huddleston has told the i paper that Sunak will still be identifying trade opportunities that sit outside a full trade deal and, to this end, the digital sector – such as commerce and internet services – has been identified as a fruitful area of pursuit. This comes after the UK managed to secure its first digital trade deal with Singapore last year.
How much progress can we expect Sunak to make during his visit?
Britain is already on the back foot in some of these areas. When it comes to his mission to push London as a leader in AI governance, for instance, it’s worth noting that this comes against a backdrop of the UK no longer being part of the Tech and Trade Council, a key existing forum where EU countries and the US already discuss AI regulation.
That said, war in Ukraine – and the tougher line Britain has taken on Russia compared to many of its European neighbours – has brought Washington and London closer together, and may well make Biden more amenable to some of the PM’s proposals.
Sunak, who studied in California alongside his wife at Stanford University, still owns a house in Santa Monica and is set to be a guest of honour at a Washington Nationals baseball game on Wednesday evening, is certainly off to a sunnier start with Biden than that of Boris Johnson.
Crucially, he is also currying favour with Biden – and has smoothed over some of the Washington-London tensions incurred under Johnson’s administration – in light of the efforts he has made to resolve differences with Brussels over the Northern Ireland Protocol. Indeed, Huddleston claims that, on a trip to Washington a few months ago, it was evident that the “mood has changed” since the Windsor Framework and the appetite for trade with the UK is growing. We shall see.
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