{"id":489570,"date":"2026-02-19T06:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T06:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/489570\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T06:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T06:44:10","slug":"countries-that-do-not-embrace-ai-could-be-left-behind-says-openais-george-osborne-george-osborne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/489570\/","title":{"rendered":"Countries that do not embrace AI could be left behind, says OpenAI\u2019s George Osborne | George Osborne"},"content":{"rendered":"

The former chancellor George Osborne<\/a> has said countries that do not embrace the kind of powerful AI systems made by his new employer, OpenAI, risk \u201cFomo\u201d and could be left weaker and poorer.<\/p>\n

Osborne, who is two months into a job<\/a> as head of the $500bn San Francisco AI company\u2019s \u201cfor countries\u201d programme, told leaders gathered for the AI Impact summit in Delhi: \u201cDon\u2019t be left behind.\u201d He said that without AI rollouts they could end up with a workforce \u201cless willing to stay put\u201d because they might want to seek AI-enabled fortunes elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Osborne framed the choice facing countries as one between adopting AI systems produced either in the US \u2013 such as Open AI\u2019s \u2013 or China. The two superpowers have so far developed the most powerful AI systems.<\/p>\n

The fourth intergovernmental AI summit<\/a>, hosted by India\u2019s prime minister, Narendra Modi, follows editions in the UK, Korea and France and is focusing on harnessing AI to the benefit of countries in the global south, for example by embracing more regional languages and applying AI to improving agriculture and public health.<\/p>\n

It is also aiming to improve safety standards, which some experts fear are falling short of addressing the potential catastrophic risks<\/a> being posed by the most advanced AIs amid White House opposition to red tape.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of countries who aren\u2019t the United States of America and who aren\u2019t the People\u2019s Republic of China essentially face two kind of slightly contradictory feelings at the same time,\u201d Osborne said. \u201cThe first is a Fomo: are we missing out on this huge technological revolution? How to be part of it? How do we make sure that our companies feel the benefits of it? How do we make sure our societies feel the benefits of it?\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, he said, these countries wanted to safeguard their national sovereignty while relying on powerful AIs controlled in the US and China.<\/p>\n

Osborne said: \u201cThere\u2019s another kind of sovereignty, which is: don\u2019t be left behind, because then you will be a weaker nation, a poorer nation, a nation whose workforce will be less willing to stay put.\u201d<\/p>\n

His comments came as the White House\u2019s senior AI adviser, Sriram Krishnan, emphasised the Trump administration\u2019s desire for AI supremacy, telling the summit: \u201cWe want to make sure the world uses our AI model.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also took a fresh swipe at the EU\u2019s attempts to regulate AI, saying he would continue to \u201crant\u201d against them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe EU AI Act is not really very conducive to an entrepreneur who wants to build innovative technology,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But other technologists, and AI leaders in Africa<\/a>, said the case for reliance on the two AI superpowers was not so clearcut.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea that countries other than China and the US won\u2019t be able to build big things \u2013 and we [hear] that a lot \u2013 is actually a false premise,\u201d Mark Surman, the head of Mozilla, said. \u201cIt benefits the companies within those two countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, it\u2019s not a US or China thing,\u201d said Kevin Degila, in charge of of AI and data at the Benin<\/a> government\u2019s digital agency. \u201cWe are Africans and our job is to collaborate [with each other] to build our own AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said 64 languages were spoken in his country of 15 million people and the government agency was building AIs for the public that fuse both American and Chinese AI technologies and their own large language datasets.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnthropic and OpenAI<\/a> don\u2019t reach the farmers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Paula Ingabire, Rwanda\u2019s minister of ICT and innovation, said her country was looking at partnerships with AI companies \u201cthat are going to be progressively less necessary\u201d, with Rwanda<\/a> not wishing to be \u201clocked into very dependent partnerships\u201d.<\/p>\n

Also speaking at the summit was Rishi Sunak, the former UK prime minister, who now advises one of OpenAI\u2019s main rivals, Anthropic, and Microsoft.<\/p>\n

He urged political leaders to take bolder steps to lead the rollout of AI, saying: \u201cIf you are a prime minister you can only do a few things that you drive personally, and this has to be one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my concerns is that I think some political leaders think that AI is going to be tomorrow\u2019s issue, where I think they need to recognise that it\u2019s an \u2018action this day\u2019 issue,\u201d Sunak said. \u201cAI needs to go to a centralised responsibility so we can realise the benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former chancellor George Osborne has said countries that do not embrace the kind of powerful AI systems…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-489570","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}