Former chancellor George Osborne has said countries that do not embrace powerful AI systems made by his new employer, OpenAI, risk “fomo” and will be left weak and poor.
Osborne, two months into the job as head of the $500bn San Francisco AI company’s “For Nations” program, told leaders gathered for the AI Impact Summit in Delhi: “Don’t hold back.” Without AI rollouts, he says, they could end up with a workforce that is “less willing to stay put” because they’ll seek AI-enabled fortunes elsewhere.
Osborne framed countries facing a choice between adopting AI systems produced in the US – open AI’s – or China. Both superpowers have developed the most powerful AI systems ever.
The fourth Intergovernmental AI Summit hosted by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi follows editions in the UK, Korea and France and focused on using AI to benefit countries in the Global South, such as adopting more regional languages and applying AI to improve agriculture and public health.
It also aims to improve safety standards, amid White House opposition to red tape that some experts fear could be tackled by highly sophisticated AIs, potentially catastrophic risks.
“Most countries that aren’t the United States of America and aren’t the People’s Republic of China face two kinds of slightly conflicting sentiments at the same time,” Osborne said. “The first is a FOMO: Are we missing out on this massive technological revolution? How can we be a part of it? How can we make sure our companies feel its benefits? How can our societies feel its benefits?”
At the same time, he said, these countries want to protect their national sovereignty while relying on powerful AIs controlled in the US and China.
Osborne said: “There’s another kind of sovereignty, and that’s: don’t fall behind, because then you’re going to be a weak country, a poor country, a country that likes to have less of a workforce.”
His comments came as Sriram Krishnan, the White House’s senior AI adviser, emphasized the Trump administration’s desire for AI dominance: “We want to make sure the world uses our AI model.”
He also took a fresh swipe at the EU’s attempts to regulate AI, saying he would continue to “testify” against them.
“EU AI legislation is not very favorable to an entrepreneur who wants to build really innovative technology,” he said.
But other technologists and AI leaders in Africa say the reliance on the two AI superpowers is less clear.
“The idea is that countries other than China and the US can’t build big things — and we do [hear] A lot — actually a false premise,” said Mark Surman, the head of Mozilla. “It’s going to benefit companies in those two countries.”
“For us, it’s not a matter of the US or China,” said Kevin Degila, head of AI and data at Benin’s government digital agency. “We are Africans and our job is to cooperate [with each other] To build our own AI.”
He says the government agency is building AIs for people in his country of 15 million people, who speak 64 languages, combining American and Chinese AI technologies and their own large language datasets.
“Anthropic and OpenAI will not reach farmers,” he said.
Paula Ingabire, Rwanda’s minister of ICT and innovation, said her country is looking into partnerships with AI companies that are “progressively less necessary,” adding that Rwanda does not want to be “locked into very dependent partnerships.”
Also speaking at the summit was Rishi Sunak, a former UK prime minister who now advises Anthropic and Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s main rivals.
He urged politicians to take bold steps to lead the deployment of AI: “If you’re prime minister you can only do certain things that you personally drive, and this should be one of them.”
“One of my concerns is that some politicians think AI is tomorrow’s issue, where I think they need to recognize that it’s an ‘action this day’ issue,” Sunak said. “AI needs to move to centralized responsibility so we can realize the benefits.”
