EU chief says will work with major AI players to help 'pace the frontier'

The EU will invite the world's largest AI labs for talks on "how we can support ongoing industry efforts to pace the frontier", European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday.

Fears over rogue AI have spiked dramatically after OpenAI technology operating outside human supervision hacked into Hugging Face, a repository of AI models.

Similar incidents since July have led to growing calls to pause or slow AI development, spurred by stark warnings of the technology's deadly potential from former employees of the big AI companies.

"The dangers of self-improving models are becoming ever more apparent," von der Leyen said during a keynote speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.

"Incidents of AI agents escaping their environment or inserting malicious code are a mere glimpse."

"We will step up together with our like-minded partners like Canada, the United Kingdom and others," she said, with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney looking on, saying Europe's AI Act put it "in the position to shape global efforts" to regulate the crucial sector.

Europe is also seeking to stay in the AI race with China and the United States.

"It is also true that Europe will need its own capabilities, in particular, to protect our national security. We need to stay in the race," von der Leyen said.