China, Chips and Archery: Inside a Mystery AI Event in the Utah Mountains

tech.hindustantimes.com:

While President Biden was in San Francisco finalizing an agreement between the US and China to open a dialogue on artificial intelligence, among other issues, a who's who of AI and military leaders gathered nearly 800 miles away for a secretive event in the Utah mountains. Over the course of three days last week, more than 100 AI executives and insiders, venture capitalists and government officials listened to talks about the AI arms race between the US and China, and mulled the impact of Biden's sweeping executive order on the industry. They discussed how AI could be used by bad actors and considered the next possible tectonic shifts in the industry. 

The event, called the AI Security Summit, was hosted by Scale AI Inc., a startup that offers AI training and data labeling services to customers ranging from OpenAI and General Motors Co. to the US Army. Only those invited had reason to know about it. An all-black, password-protected webpage for the summit gave little away. “Join the world's brightest AI leaders and visionaries,” a message on the site read. “By invitation only.”

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For the AI community, the summit served as a chance to talk through uncertainties ahead — around AI regulation, political conflicts and the technology itself — in a luxury retreat far removed from hearing rooms in Washington and boardrooms in Silicon Valley. It also offered an opportunity to speak more freely than at public events, as attendees agreed to only share information from the conference without referencing anyone's identities or place of work. For Scale, the summit could help burnish its reputation as a leader of such discussions and position it at the nexus between the AI and defense worlds. Scale