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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak delivers a speech on AI at Royal Society, Carlton House Terrace on Oct. 26, 2023 in London, England.

Peter Nicholls | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday warned of the risks of artificial intelligence, ahead of a summit in which the U.K. hopes to take a global role in shaping how safety around the technology is designed.

Sunak said in a speech that AI “will bring a transformation as far reaching as the industrial revolution, the coming of electricity, or the birth of the internet” — while adding that there are risks attached to that proposition.

The prime minister said that AI could make it easier to build chemical or biological weapons and that criminals could exploit the technology.

“In the most unlikely but extreme cases, there is even the risk that humanity could lose control of AI completely through the kind of AI sometimes referred to as super intelligence,” Sunak said.

Sunak’s speech came as the British government gears up to host the AI Safety Summit next week. The event aims to bring together countries and companies to discuss the risks around AI. It will take place in Bletchley Park — the home of the codebreakers who cracked the code that ended World War II.

On Wednesday, the U.K. government released a report called “Capabilities and risks from frontier AI,” in which it explains frontier AI as “highly capable general-purpose AI models that can perform a wide variety of tasks and match or exceed the capabilities present in today’s most advanced models.”

This definition includes some of the large language models that underpin applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard chatbot.

Sunak announced that the U.K. will set up the world’s first AI safety institute to evaluate and test new types of AI in order understand the risks.

At the AI Safety Summit next week, Sunak said he will propose to set up a “truly global expert panel nominated by the countries and organizations attending to publish a state of AI science report.”

The U.S. and China are broadly seen as the two leaders in AI, serving as home to some of the world’s leading companies in the space. The U.K. has some notable AI firms, such as Alphabet-owned DeepMind, as well as strong tech-geared universities. But Britain is seen as a distant third contender, behind China and the U.S.

Britain is trying to position itself as a leader in the area of AI safety and is trying to lead the charge to police the technology.

Sunak said China has been invited to the summit next week.

“Now, I know there are some who will say that [China] should have been excluded. But there can be no serious strategy for AI without at least trying to engage all of the world’s leading AI powers,” Sunak said.

China and the U.S. has been in engaged in a battle for technology supremacy, with Washington looking to restrict Beijing’s access to key technologies related to AI. Meanwhile, China has been introducing a slew of regulations around AI over the past year and a half, as Beijing looks to keep a close watch on the development of the technology.

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Tesla shares drop 7% in premarket trading after Elon Musk says he is launching a political party

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Tesla shares drop 7% in premarket trading after Elon Musk says he is launching a political party

White House Senior Advisor Elon Musk walks to the White House after landing in Marine One on the South Lawn with U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) on March 9, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Samuel Corum | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Tesla shares fell in premarket trade on Monday after CEO Elon Musk announced plans to form a new political party.

The stock was down 7.13% by 4:27 a.m. E.T.

Musk said over the weekend that the party would be called the “America Party” and could focus “on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts.” He suggested this would be “enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people.”

The billionaire’s involvement in politics has been a point of contention for investors. Musk earlier this year was part of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and worked closely with President Donald Trump — a move seen as potentially hurting Tesla’s brand.

Musk left DOGE in May, which helped Tesla’s stock.

Now tech billionaire’s reinvolvement in the political arena is making investors nervous.

“Very simply Musk diving deeper into politics and now trying to take on the Beltway establishment is exactly the opposite direction that Tesla investors/shareholders want him to take during this crucial period for the Tesla story,” Dan Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, said in a note on Sunday.

“While the core Musk supporters will back Musk at every turn no matter what, there is broader sense of exhaustion from many Tesla investors that Musk keeps heading down the political track.”

Musk’s previous political foray earned him Trump’s praise in the early days, but he has since drawn the ire of the U.S. president.

The two have clashed over various areas of policy, including Trump’s spending bill which Musk has said would increase America’s debt burden. Musk has taken issue to particular cuts to tax credits and support for solar and wind energy and electric vehicles.

Trump on Sunday called Musk’s move to form a political party “ridiculous,” adding that the Tesla boss had gone “completely off the rails.”

Musk is contending with more than just political turmoil. Tesla reported a 14% year-on-year decline in car deliveries in the second quarter, missing expectations. The company is facing rising competition, especially in its key market, China.

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AI chip startup Groq expands with first European data center

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AI chip startup Groq expands with first European data center

Jonathan Ross, chief executive officer of Groq Inc., during the GenAI Summit in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday, May 30, 2024.

David Paul | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Artificial intelligence semiconductor startup Groq announced Monday it has established its first data center in Europe as it steps up its international expansion.

Groq, which is backed by investment arms of Samsung and Cisco, said the data center will be located in Helsinki, Finland and is in partnership with Equinix.

Groq is looking to take advantage of rising demand for AI services in Europe following other U.S. firms which have also ramped up investment in the region. The Nordics in particular is a popular location for the data facilities as the region has easy access to renewable energy and cooler climates. Last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was in Europe and signed several infrastructure deals, including data centers.

Groq, which is valued at $2.8 billion, designs a chip that the company calls a language processing unit (LPU). It is designed for inferencing rather training. Inferencing is when a pre-trained AI model interprets live data to come up with a result, much like the answers that are produced by popular chatbots.

While Nvidia has a stranglehold on the chips required for training huge AI models with its graphics processing units (GPUs), there is a swathe of startups hoping to take a slice of the pie when it comes to inferencing. SambaNova; Ampere, a company SoftBank is in the process of purchasing; Cerebras and Fractile, are all looking to join the AI inference race.

European politicians have been pushing the notion of sovereign AI — where data centers must be located in the region. Data centers that are located closer to users also help improve the speed of services.

Global data center builder Equinix connects different cloud providers together, such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, making it easier for businesses to have multiple vendors. Groq’s LPUs will be installed inside the Equinix data center allowing businesses to access Groq’s inference capabilities via Equinix.

Groq currently has data centers in the U.S. and Canada and Saudi Arabia with its technology.

Don’t miss Groq CEO Jonathan Ross on Squawk Box Europe at 7:45 a.m. London time.

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Inside a Utah desert facility preparing humans for life on Mars

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Inside a Utah desert facility preparing humans for life on Mars

Hidden among the majestic canyons of the Utah desert, about 7 miles from the nearest town, is a small research facility meant to prepare humans for life on Mars.

The Mars Society, a nonprofit organization that runs the Mars Desert Research Station, or MDRS, invited CNBC to shadow one of its analog crews on a recent mission.

MDRS is the best analog astronaut environment,” said Urban Koi, who served as health and safety officer for Crew 315. “The terrain is extremely similar to the Mars terrain and the protocols, research, science and engineering that occurs here is very similar to what we would do if we were to travel to Mars.”

SpaceX CEO and Mars advocate Elon Musk has said his company can get humans to Mars as early as 2029.

The 5-person Crew 315 spent two weeks living at the research station following the same procedures that they would on Mars.

David Laude, who served as the crew’s commander, described a typical day.

“So we all gather around by 7 a.m. around a common table in the upper deck and we have breakfast,” he said. “Around 8:00 we have our first meeting of the day where we plan out the day. And then in the morning, we usually have an EVA of two or three people and usually another one in the afternoon.”

An EVA refers to extravehicular activity. In NASA speak, EVAs refer to spacewalks, when astronauts leave the pressurized space station and must wear spacesuits to survive in space.

“I think the most challenging thing about these analog missions is just getting into a rhythm. … Although here the risk is lower, on Mars performing those daily tasks are what keeps us alive,” said Michael Andrews, the engineer for Crew 315.

Watch the video to find out more.

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