AI companies commit to safe tech development at Seoul summit

Sixteen companies involved in AI including Alphabet's Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, as well as companies from China, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates have committed to safe development of the technology.

The statement unveiled yesterday came as South Korea and Britain host a global AI summit in Seoul at a time when the breakneck pace of AI innovation leaves governments scrambling to keep up.

The agreement is a step up from the number of commitments at the first global AI summit held six months ago in the UK, the statement said.

Zhipu.ai, backed by Chinese tech giants Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan and Xiaomi, as well as UAE's Technology Innovation Institute were among the 16 companies pledging to publish safety frameworks on how they will measure risks of frontier AI models.

The firms, also including Amazon, IBM and Samsung Electronics, voluntarily committed to not develop or deploy AI models if the risks cannot be sufficiently mitigated, and to ensure governance and transparency on approaches to AI safety, the statement said.

Reuters