Former Chancellor George Osborne has said that countries that do not adopt powerful AI systems created by his new employer, OpenAI, risk “fomo” and could be left weaker and poorer.
Osborne, who has been serving for two months as head of the $500 billion San Francisco AI company’s “For Nations” program, told leaders gathered for the AI Impact Summit in Delhi: “Don’t be left behind.” He said that without AI rollouts they could end up with a workforce “less willing to remain in the workplace” because they might want to seek AI-enabled fortunes elsewhere.
Osborne faced countries with a choice between adopting US-made AI systems – such as Open AI – or China. Both the superpowers have developed the most powerful AI systems so far.
The fourth intergovernmental AI summit, hosted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, follows editions in the UK, Korea and France and is focusing on using AI for the benefit of countries in the global south, for example adopting more regional languages and applying AI to improve agriculture and public health.
It also aims to improve security standards, which some experts fear is falling short of addressing the potentially catastrophic risks posed by the most advanced AI amid opposition to red tape at the White House.
“A lot of countries that are not the United States and that are not the People’s Republic of China essentially face two kinds of slightly contradictory feelings at the same time,” Osborn said. “The first is fomo: Are we missing out on this huge technological revolution? How to be part of it? How do we make sure our companies feel the benefits of it? How do we make sure our societies feel the benefits of it?”
At the same time, he said, these countries wanted to protect their national sovereignty by relying on powerful AI controlled in the US and China.
Osborne said: “There is another kind of sovereignty, which is: Don’t stay behind, because then you will be a weaker nation, a poorer nation, a nation whose workforce will be less inclined to stay.”
His comments came as the White House’s senior AI adviser, Sriram Krishnan, stressed the Trump administration’s desire for AI dominance at the summit, saying: “We want to make sure the world uses our AI models.”
He also took a fresh hit at the EU’s efforts to regulate AI, saying he would continue to “campaign” against them.
“The EU AI Act is really not very friendly to an entrepreneur who wants to create innovative technology,” he said.
But other technologists and AI leaders in Africa said the case for dependence on the two AI superpowers was not so clear cut.
Mark Surman, head of Mozilla, said, “The idea that countries other than China and the US won’t be able to build big things – and we hear that a lot – is really a false premise.” “This benefits companies in both those countries.”
“For us, it’s not a matter of the US or China,” said Kevin Degila, in charge of AI and data at the Benin government’s digital agency. “We are Africans and our job is to collaborate (with each other) to create our own AI.”
He said 64 languages are spoken in his country of 15 million people and the government agency is building AI for the masses that combines both American and Chinese AI technologies and their own large language datasets.
“Anthropic and OpenAI do not reach farmers,” he said.
Rwanda’s Minister of ICT and Innovation Paula Ingabire said that while her country is considering partnerships with AI companies, which are “progressively becoming less essential”, Rwanda does not want to be “locked into very dependent partnerships”.
Also speaking at the summit was former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who now advises Anthropic and Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s main rivals.
He urged political leaders to take bold steps to lead the implementation of AI, saying: “If you’re a prime minister there are only a few things you can do personally, and this should be one of them.”
“One of my concerns is that I think some political leaders think AI is going to be an issue of tomorrow, where I think they need to recognize that this is an issue of ‘action today’,” Sunak said. “AI needs to move to a centralized responsibility so we can realize the benefits.”
