Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is one of a number of business and political leaders who will attend the annual Bilderberg meeting in Lisbon, Portugal.
Win Mcnamee | Getty Images News | Getty Images
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will join forces with key leadership from companies such as Microsoft and Google this week as a secret meeting of the business and political elite kicks off in Lisbon, Portugal.
Artificial intelligence will top the agenda when ChatGPT boss meets Microsoft CEO Satya NadellaDeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the annual Bilderberg meeting.
The tech titans will be joined by political heavyweights including former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba for a series of discussions spanning international relations, trade, energy and finance.
All in all, around 130 participants from 23 countries are set to take part private meeting — a similar number to previous years. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, BP Chief Bernard Looney, Total energy CEO Patrick Pouyanne, investor Peter Thiel and a number of EU politicians will also be there.
The three-day event, which this year runs from Thursday to Sunday, is shrouded in mystery, with secret talks held behind closed doors and subject to Chatham House rules, which mean the identity and affiliation of speakers cannot be revealed.
It has sparked conspiracy theories, similar to those aimed at high-level meetings such as World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, by those who claim that the participants are trying to establish a “new world order.” However, the event’s organizers say the discreet nature of it is to allow for greater freedom of discussion.
What is on the agenda in 2023?
Key topics discussed at this year’s meeting were published by its organizers on Thursday, providing insight into what it considers to be the most pressing issues in global affairs:
- AI
- Banking system
- China
- Energy transition
- Europe
- Fiscal policy challenges
- India
- Industrial policy and trade
- NATO
- Russia
- Transnational threats
- Ukraine
- America’s leadership
The talks come as the launch of artificial intelligence tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard have contributed to growing concerns about the rapid development of technology, with Altman called to testify before the US Senate on Tuesday.
Meanwhile in progress war in Ukraine and concerns about rising China threats have become a source of continued discussion among Western leaders, with signs of divisions in US and European politics widening in recent months.
What is Bilderberg?
Now in its 69th year, the Bilderberg Summit was formed in 1954 to “promote dialogue” between Europe and North America.
Today, about two-thirds of participants come from Europe and the rest from North America, with about a quarter from politics and government and the rest from other fields, according to a statement on its website. About one fifth are women.
And as always, discretion is key. Participants participate as individuals, rather than in any official capacity, and no official detailed agenda is disclosed, nor are the discussions reportable.
“The Bilderberg Meeting is a forum for informal discussion of major issues. The meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) or any other participants can be revealed” , organizers said in a press release on Thursday.
The event is organized by the Bilderberg Meeting Foundation, which itself is governed by a rotating steering committee, and is financed in various ways. There is no attendance fee for the event, but participation is by invitation only and participants are expected to cover their own travel and accommodation expenses.
“Annual contributions from the steering committee members cover the annual costs of the small secretariat. The budget of the secretariat is limited to personnel and administrative costs. The costs of hospitality for the annual meeting are the responsibility of the steering committee members of the host country,” added a statement on its website.
Correction: Dmytro Kuleba is Ukraine’s foreign minister and Peter Thiel is an investor. An earlier version misspelled their names.
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