AI summit a start but global agreement a distant hope

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak championed a series of landmark agreements after hosting the first artificial intelligence (AI) safety summit but a global plan for overseeing the technology remains a long way off.

Over two days of talks between world leaders, business executives and researchers, tech CEOs such as Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman rubbed shoulders with the likes of US Vice President Kamala Harris and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen to discuss the future regulation of AI.

Leaders from 28 nations - including China - signed the Bletchley Declaration, a joint statement acknowledging the technology's risks; the US and Britain both announced plans to launch their own AI safety institutes; and two more summits were announced to take place in South Korea and France next year.

But while some consensus was reached on the need to regulate...