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King Charles is bringing some of the biggest names in AI to Scotland on September 17. The 77-year-old King will meet leaders from Nvidia, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic at Dumfries House in Ayrshire.

The meeting will focus on where AI is heading and how technology will help people without losing sight of human values. But the King’s main concern is “fundamentally about inheritance.” It is about “what sort of technological world today’s leaders are creating” for future generations. 

It means those generations will have to live with the decisions being made now. A royal insider told Radar Online that Charles “really is haunted” by how it could shape the future generations of the monarchy. He has grandchildren growing up in a society that will be transformed by artificial intelligence. 

“Nobody can know precisely where this technology will lead,” the insider said. That uncertainty is something Charles “takes extremely seriously.” The source added that Charles doesn’t see AI as something that should be stopped. The insider noted he has “spent decades warning” that progress can have consequences. Some of those may not be “immediately obvious.”

He reportedly doesn’t want society to look back years from now and regret what happened. He fears “extraordinary technological advances” could come at the expense of the “qualities and values that make us human.”

The source said Charles doesn’t believe AI is  “inherently dangerous.” He does see “enormous potential benefits” in it. But again, the reported apprehension is whether it is “thinking about responsibility, communities and future generations.” 

The source concluded, “He knows there won’t be simple answers.” But he “believes the difficulty of establishing safeguards is an argument for beginning that conversation now rather than avoiding it.” 

Meanwhile, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and Google DeepMind Co-Founder Sir Demis Hassabis will reportedly be there at the meeting. OpenAI’s Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar is also set to attend. IonQ Chief Niccolò de Masi is expected to join them, too. 

Paolo Benanti, a Vatican adviser on AI and technology ethics, may attend. Britain’s AI Minister Kanishka Narayan will join as well. According to The Independent, the Ditchley Foundation is overseeing the gathering. It has also drawn up a draft charter for the AI leaders to discuss. 

Charles has spoken about AI before, through a recorded message to the U.K.’s first AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in 2023. That event was hosted by then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. This time, though, Charles is personally bringing the major AI industry together for a private discussion. 

Meanwhile, Charles has been spending a lot of time at Balmoral in Scotland over the past few weeks. He arrived at the royal estate on August 18 for his unusual late-summer stay. He did briefly head back to London on September 3 with Queen Camilla to see the Bayeux Tapestry. But he was back at Balmoral the next day.

Since then, he went to the Braemar Gathering on September 5 and reopened the Braemar Mountain Rescue Centre on September 10. The next day, Charles met Cambridge professor Robert Miller at Balmoral. On September 12, Scottish First Minister John Swinney also met with the King at the castle. 

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