King Charles III opened a private AI summit in Scotland on Thursday.
He warned the technology’s rapid rise is “intriguing and deeply concerning in equal measure.”
The king spoke at Dumfries House in Ayrshire, according to a transcript published by the Royal Family’s official website.
King warns AI could develop “darker capacities”
Charles said AI is already saving lives in medicine.
But he added that its creators are now warning of darker risks too.
“Those who have created these technologies are now increasingly warning that AI risks developing darker capacities, perhaps even to take life,” he said.
He called for urgency in weighing the technology’s existential dangers before it is “too late.”
He said people who value humanity’s “moral component” are anxiously seeking reassurance. “We will not lose control of our destiny, or our souls,” he said.
Charles asks industry to balance safety with global cooperation
The king posed two questions to his guests.
First, how can AI’s benefits be harnessed with safety at its core? Second, how can nations build cooperation so no country is left behind, but humanity stays in control?
He said the answers need more than technical skill.
They also need what he called “emotional excellence,” the quality he said separates people from machines.
“Our humanity must remain sacred,” he said.
Charles also referenced Harmony, a philosophy he co-wrote about sixteen years ago.
It stresses balance between people and the natural world, He added further that the same principle should guide how AI is developed.
This isn’t the king’s first appeal for AI safeguards.
In November 2023, Charles addressed the UK’s inaugural AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, where 28 countries, including the US and China, signed the Bletchley Declaration, a world-first agreement committing to developing and deploying AI safely.
He told that summit AI was “no less significant” than the discovery of fire, but warned it also carried “significant risks.”
Thursday’s Dumfries House gathering builds directly on that message, three years on, as the industry’s own leaders now debate whether development needs to slow.
Nvidia’s Huang, DeepMind’s Hassabis among 30 attendees
Roughly 30 technology executives, policymakers and ethics researchers attended.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was there, and He has publicly opposed new AI regulations.
Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis also attended, and He called for an international AI standards body.
OpenAI sent Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar instead of CEO Sam Altman.
Other guests named included Anthropic’s Tino Cuéllar, historian Yuval Noah Harari, Vatican AI adviser Paolo Benanti, and MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli.
Britain’s AI Minister Kanishka Narayan also attended.
The session was convened under the Ditchley Foundation, a UK geopolitical group.
Summit lands amid Amodei-Trump split over AI’s pace
The summit lands amid open disagreement over AI’s pace.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for slowing development of frontier models.
President Donald Trump has rejected that idea. He said only China benefits from a slowdown.
It comes the same week OpenAI and Anthropic both disclosed new AI misalignment incidents, adding to investor scrutiny of how AI labs manage safety risks while racing to scale infrastructure spending.
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