Keir Starmer has decided not to travel to Paris for next week’s international summit on artificial intelligence, despite the attendance of other world leaders including Emmanuel Macron, Narendra Modi and JD Vance.
Sources have told the Guardian that the prime minister will not attend the summit, the latest in a series of international AI conferences started by the former prime minister Rishi Sunak last year at Bletchley Park.
Officials say Starmer, who has been accused in the past of taking too many foreign trips, will be concentrating on his domestic agenda.
But by missing the Paris conference, Starmer risks upsetting the French president and the Indian prime minister, who are co-hosting, and missing out on a chance to speak to some of those closest to Donald Trump.
Vance, Trump’s vice-president, is expected to represent the US, and industry sources believe Elon Musk may also attend in a business capacity as the founder of the AI company xAI.
A No 10 spokesperson said: “The power and potential of evolving technologies like AI are rightly being harnessed by the UK and our allies.
“The prime minister recently launched our AI action plan, to make sure Britain is maximising our role as a current AI leader, to secure jobs, growth and to improve the lives of working people.
“He is a big believer in the galvanising economic potential of this tech, and so of course wishes our close ally President Macron a successful summit.”
Starmer is understood to be planning to spend the first day of the two-day summit (10-11 February) on a housing-related visit in the UK, before a Commons vote on the government’s immigration bill.
Sunak launched the AI safety summits last year when he hosted a two-day event at Bletchley Park attended by Kamala Harris, then the US vice-president, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister.
That summit was seen as a diplomatic coup and resulted in the first international declaration on how to develop AI safely, amid warnings that advanced algorithms could eventually pose a threat to humanity. Starmer has previously called that summit “very important”.
Since entering Downing Street, Starmer has shown a similar interest to his predecessor in AI, but unlike Sunak he has chosen to focus more heavily on the opportunities the technology can bring. Last month the prime minister gave a speech on the technology in which he said: “Britain will be one of the great AI superpowers.”
Alan Mak, the shadow science and innovation secretary, said: “The Conservatives hosted the first AI safety summit, establishing the UK as a world leader in the sector.
“Keir Starmer is threatening that legacy and further damaging Britain’s leadership on the world stage by spurning this important summit.”
Next week’s summit is being seen in Paris as a key moment in Macron’s presidency and a test of his clout on the international stage. France is keen to use the gathering to talk about how to provide clean power for AI and how to mitigate disruption to the labour market.
Macron has put great store by his AI strategy, saying that mastering the technology was an “existential challenge” for France.
“The president wants to make it a kind of AI version of Choose France,” an Elysée spokesperson said. “Choose France is the annual summit aimed at proving how attractive the country is to major foreign corporations.”
A source close to the president told French reporters recently: “This is going to be the thing for Emmanuel Macron, and he has high expectations of it. The Élysée Palace is working very hard on this.”
