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June 8 (UPI) -- British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said his country and the United States have agreed to a new deal for transatlantic cooperation that includes working together on handling the opportunities and challenges posed by artificial intelligence. Speaking at the White House on Thursday, Sunak also announced that the United Kingdom would host the first major global summit on AI safety in the fall, as he vowed to work with President Joe Biden on the issue.
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"Our job as leaders is to ensure that this technological revolution makes us more secure and not less," Sunak said. "The U.S. and the U.K. are the worlds foremost democratic AI powers. So today President Biden and I agreed to work together on AI safety, including multilaterally."
Noting that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt met there a little over 70 years ago, Sunak said, "Our economies are seeing perhaps the biggest transformation since the Industrial Revolution as new technologies provide incredible opportunities but also give our adversaries more tools for harm."
"The one thing I know won't change -- I'm confident won't change -- is the strength of our partnership and our friendship," Sunak said. "And we will put our values front and center, as we've always done, to deliver for the British and American people."
The new agreement, called the "Atlantic declaration," will allow the two countries to more closely cooperate on emerging technologies and energy transitions.
As part of the agreement, the two countries will increase their cooperation to ensure that countries such as China and Russia are not able to acquire sensitive technology that could cause harm to other nations.
They will also cooperate on the future of 5G and 6G mobile network technologies, as well as possible future advances on quantum computing, semiconductors and engineering biology.
The White House also said Thursday that the two countries were announcing the launch of a Joint Clean Energy Supply Chain Action Plan, which seeks to accelerate the transition to renewable energy.
"These are the pressing economic issues of our time," the White House said on Thursday. "These are the issues that demand the United States and the United Kingdom to lead together."
Earlier, Sunak noted that Britain and the United States were two of only three countries globally with tech sectors valued at more than $1 trillion, saying this was due in part to the world-class universities and research institutions on both sides of the Atlantic.
On Wednesday, Sunak held talks with leaders on Capitol Hill, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in which they discussed reimagining the long-standing British-U.S. alliance for the new challenges of today, with a focus on partnering to "improve shared economic security."
Sunak wrapped up Day One of his Washington visit with a baseball game to celebrate U.K.-U.S Friendship Day and honor fallen American and British service personnel.
The Washington summit comes after the United States, Britain and Australia in March signed an agreement to build a nuclear-powered submarine fleet to counter the growing assertiveness of China's naval forces in the Pacific.
The pact followed the 2021 signing of AUKUS, a trilateral Indo-Pacific security pact, formed in part, as a response to Chinese expansionist ambitions in Southeast Asia.
