Britain limits AI summit guest list to 100 invitees, excludes startups

By Martin Coulter

LONDON (Reuters) - The guest list for Britain's upcoming global artificial intelligence (AI) summit will be limited to 100 politicians, business leaders and academics -- and will exclude a host of prominent AI startups, according to one of its lead organisers.

The highly anticipated event is set to test Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's conviction that Britain can serve as the world leader in regulating the rapidly developing technology, an ambition that has provoked criticism from some.

The summit is set to take place on Nov. 1 and 2 at Bletchley Park, the site north of London where Britain's World War Two codebreakers cracked Nazi Germany's Enigma code.

While the guest list has not yet been made public, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as senior executives from Big Tech companies such as Alphabet, are among those expected to attend.

But the highly-exclusive nature of the event means some of Britain's best-known AI startups -- such as Faculty or Graphcore -- are unlikely to be in attendance.

Writing on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, co-organiser Matt Clifford said: "There are a tonne of trade offs in planning a summit like this. We've chosen to have a very small, very focused summit which aims to get substantive outcomes where every attendee is an active participant."

He added: "There'll be about 100 attendees, roughly split between Cabinet ministers from around the world, CEOs of companies building AI at the frontier, academics, and representatives of international civil society. This means making very tough choices about invitations!"

Clifford, himself a cofounder of startup incubator Entrepreneur First, said only companies building the most powerful AI models would be expected to attend.

He added that culture secretary Michelle Donelan would lead a series of more accessible events in the run-up to the summit.

(Reporting by Martin Coulter; editing by Christina Fincher)