King Charles and Queen Camilla were seen heading to church ahead of his meeting with top global artificial intelligence chiefs to ask them how the new technology can be developed for ‘the good of humanity’.
They were pictured driving to their go-to church, Crathie Kirk, just outside the Balmoral royal residence, where they had attended a church service with Andy Burnham last week.
This week, Charles will meet with AI leaders from Nvidia, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and OpenAI in Scotland in hopes of a ‘wider understanding of the responsibilities’ of developing the tech, a source said.
It comes after researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic last week and warned that AI ‘could kill us all by the end of the decade’ in a dramatic X post.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, Google DeepMind founder Sir Demis Hassabis and chairman and chief executive of IonQ Niccolo de Masi are among those understood to be in attendance.
Paolo Benanti, who is an adviser to the Pope on issues of AI and technology ethics, is also believed to be going to the summit.
King Charles and Queen Camilla were seen driving to their go-to church, Crathie Kirk, just outside the Balmoral Royal residence, ahead of his planned AI summit this week
Queen Camilla was seen sporting tartan on the journey. They attended the same church with Prime Minister Andy Burnham last week
A royal source told the Sunday Times: ‘The King is there to convene, listen and encourage those discussions and to pose the question of: ‘How do we develop AI for the good of humanity?’
‘As we’ve seen him do on issues like the environment and water scarcity, he is hoping to provide a neutral space to aid conversations that are part of a national and global issue on something that is going to impact all of us.’
They said Charles ‘hopes the discussions bring about a wider understanding of the responsibilities of developing this technology, as well as the opportunities, ensuring any technological development remains centred around human benefit for communities’.
They added: ‘He knows it will impact everyone in society. He wants to ask the question: “Would it be helpful to have a set of principles?” His feeling is it is not an easy thing to do, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.’
The event will be overseen by the Ditchley Foundation, which has drawn up the draft charter for AI leaders.
The source said the charter is understood to include a ‘shared set of principles’ that would ‘help guide the future application of AI, not merely as a driver of capability and efficiency, but as a tool that upholds human dignity and contributes to the flourishing of both people and the planet’.
The boss of Anthropic – whose company created the AI assistant Claude – warned that AI development must ‘slow down’ so safety measures are given time to catch up.
In an essay titled We Must Pace the Frontier, Dario Amodei said he is concerned that since this summer, AI has been ‘advancing drastically faster’.
Given the rate of AI development, Mr Amodei is worried that within six to 12 months it could be capable of leading a swarm that could take over the entire internet.
The essay has been supported by other industry leaders, including Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, and Sam Altman, head of OpenAI.
Anthropic previously said it blocked efforts by bad actors to use its AI models for malicious activity, such as cyberattacks, surveillance and research that could have led to biological weapons.
In July, OpenAI – the makers of ChatGPT – shook the industry after saying its AI system hacked into another company on its own in an ‘unprecedented cyber incident’.

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