King Charles will bring some of the biggest names in artificial intelligence to Ayrshire for a major summit examining how the rapidly developing technology can be used for the benefit of society.
Executives from Nvidia, Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic are among those expected to take part in the private gathering at Dumfries House, near Cumnock, alongside government officials and experts in technology and ethics.
The meeting will be held at the headquarters of The King’s Foundation and is being facilitated by the Ditchley Foundation, an organisation which brings together leaders from government, business and other sectors for discussions on major international challenges.
Buckingham Palace said the talks will consider how artificial intelligence can be “developed and deployed in ways that benefit society”, including its potential to strengthen communities and improve people’s lives.
Around 30 senior figures are understood to have been invited to the gathering.
OpenAI has confirmed that its chief financial officer Sarah Friar will attend, while Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and Google DeepMind co-founder Sir Demis Hassabis have also been linked with the summit.
Paolo Benanti, a Franciscan friar and expert on the ethics of technology who has advised the Vatican on artificial intelligence, is also expected to take part, while UK AI minister Kanishka Narayan is among the government representatives involved.
The talks come during an increasingly intense international debate over the speed at which artificial intelligence is developing and the safeguards needed to prevent the technology being misused.
The King is expected to use his role primarily to bring together competing companies and encourage discussion.
Dumfries House has become one of the King’s most important bases for his charitable and educational work in Scotland.
The 18th-century estate was acquired in 2007 through a consortium led by Charles when he was Prince of Wales, preventing its historic collection from being dispersed. It is now the headquarters of The King’s Foundation, which runs education, heritage, sustainability and traditional skills programmes.
The summit also places Ayrshire at the centre of a debate which has become increasingly significant locally.
Campaigners opposed to a series of proposed data centres across Ayrshire wrote the message “AI? EH NAW” in giant letters on Prestwick beach on Tuesday (15 September), beneath a flight path used by aircraft arriving at Prestwick Airport.
The group is campaigning against three proposed data centre developments in Ayrshire, including plans for a 540MW facility near Hurlford in East Ayrshire.
The demonstration was intended to be visible to technology executives arriving in Scotland for the summit.
It comes as the Scottish Parliament voted on Wednesday (16 September) for a temporary moratorium on new large-scale data centre planning applications while national guidance is developed on their environmental, energy and community impacts.
Demand for data centres has risen sharply as companies build the computing infrastructure required to develop and operate increasingly powerful AI systems.