🌍 The UK hosts an AI summit

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Today’s briefing is a 4 min read:

• 🤖 The world races to shape AI regulation.

• 🌱 The road to COP28: why’s a petrostate playing host?

• ➕ Plus: A philosophical flag, how the papers are covering the conviction of a crypto kind, and the best French toast in London.

⏱️ Around the world in sixty seconds

1. 🇨🇳 China: Beijing has called for a ceasefire in Myanmar after clashes near the Chinese border. Myanmar’s military junta later said it had lost control of the strategic town to the opposition.

2. 🇮🇹 Italy: Prime Minister Meloni has unwittingly told two Russian pranksters that Europe is “tired” of the war in Ukraine. Critics have previously accused the duo of acting as a “pro-Kremlin tool”.

3. 🇮🇩 Indonesia: Authorities have seized weapons and arrested 59 people suspected of planning to attack next year’s presidential election. The suspects belong to local Al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliates.

4. 🇦🇷 Argentina: Buenos Aires has repaid a $2.6B maturity to the IMF, injecting some stability into the country’s debt payments. It comes ahead of runoff presidential elections later this month.

5. 🇪🇬 Egypt: Hundreds of foreign passport holders have crossed into Egypt from Gaza for the first time since October 7th. A limited number of severely injured Palestinians were also allowed to cross. 

🇬🇧 UK | Artificial Intelligence

Sunak gets the US and China to agree on AI 

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hosted over 25 world leaders for a two-day AI safety summit this week, focussed on AI dangers and opportunities.

The world is pouring cash into AI right now, with the annual rate projected to hit $200B by 2025. And it’s impacting every sector, while also empowering citizens to brew better beer or add mullets to world leaders.

But the pace of change has instilled a sense of urgency around AI regulation.

So here are some quick highlights from the UK’s two-day summit:

• ✍️ 29 nations (including the US and China) signed the Bletchley Declaration on basic AI principles (eg, AI “poses significant risks”)

• 💻 Leading AI companies (Open AI, Google, Microsoft) agreed to work with governments to test their new AI models, and

• 📅 South Korea and France agreed to keep it all rolling, hosting the next two AI summits over the coming year.

Intrigue’s take: While some argue for the UN to lead here, it’s hard to see an effective UN process emerging in time, let alone keeping pace thereafter.

So in the meantime, states will keep racing to develop and deploy AI. Yet very few states actually have the resources or technological know-how to compete, and virtually all that do were gathered at Bletchley this week.

So to the extent we get meaningful AI regulation any time soon, our sense is it’ll look more plurilateral (like this week) rather than multilateral (via the UN).

And that’s probably better than nothing.

🎧 Intrigue Outloud

On today’s Intrigue Outloud podcast: where next for the Palestinian political project? (featuring Khaled Elgindy of the Middle East Institute)

📰 How newspapers covered…

The conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried

💰 We’re giving you $2,000 💰

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Well, good news! We’ve partnered with some of our favourite newsletters for a $2,000 giveaway that you can spend on anything you like. Winners will be drawn on 21 November – just in time for holiday shopping.*

And every person that enters actually helps our newsletter grow – so, what are you waiting for?

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🌱 Road to COP28

We’ll answer your COP questions every Friday! Today’s was chosen by our Diplomatic Club*: Why’s the UAE, a major oil exporter, hosting COP this year?

Meet your host

70,000+ delegates from around the world will descend on Dubai later this month for the 28th UN Climate Change Conference (aka COP28).

Dubai may seem like an odd choice. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is:

• ⛽ The world’s eighth-largest oil producer 

• 🛢️ The world’s tenth-largest gas producer, and

• ♨️ A top ten emitter per capita.

Plus COP28’s president, Sultan Al-Jaber, also heads up the UAE’s state-owned oil company, which announced a $150B expansion last year.

So first, a technical answer to “why the UAE?”: the COP host normally rotates among the five UN regional groups. This year it’s the Asia-Pacific’s turn, and that group (which includes the Middle East) put forward the UAE. 

Intrigue’s take: And now the intriguing answer: far from a bug, Al-Jaber has sought to make his fossil fuel connections a feature of this year’s summit.

His logic: cutting emissions means cutting oil and gas, and the oil and gas industry needs to be at the table to help manage that process. As a petrostate, the UAE argues it’s the right consensus-builder to steward this.

The problem: the industry already has a seat at the table. Quite a few seats, in fact (industry reps outnumbered all but one country last year). So critics say the UAE is not so much managing the energy transition, as slowing it.

Al-Jaber and the UAE have a bit to prove.

* To join our Diplomatic Club, just refer five folks with your unique link below! 

➕ Extra Intrigue

Some recommendations if you’re spending the weekend in 🇬🇧 London: 

• Eat: If you’re craving French toast, give Crome a try.

• Shop: Hit up the ‘The Big London Flea’ for all your retro needs.

• Learn: Pay a visit to the Sir John Soane’s Museum, the former house of one of England’s greatest architects. 

🏁 Flag of the day

Jamaica has one of only two national flags that don’t feature red, white, or blue. According to a government paper from 1962, its colours reflect the country’s ethos: “hardships there are but the land is green and the sun shineth.”

Based on that cracking description, our rating: 9.9/10

🗳️ Quiz time!

Answers: 1-c, 2-a, 3-d.