King handed Nvidia boss a letter warning of AI dangers

Zoe KleinmanTechnology editor

BBC King Charles handing a prize to Jensen Huang - the King is wearing a blue pinstripe suit and has a poppy on his lapel, Jensen Huang is holding the gold medal in its case and is wearing a dark suit and smiling with glasses on - the room they are in is very grand, with gold lining around a big mirror behind them, and red wall paper BBC

Jensen Huang, the head of the world’s most valuable company Nvidia, says King Charles III personally handed him a copy of a speech he delivered in 2023 that included a warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence.

“He said, there’s something I want to talk to you about. And he handed me a letter,” Huang told the BBC, speaking after receiving the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in a ceremony at St James’s Palace.

The letter was a copy of the speech delivered by the King in 2023 at the world’s first AI Summit, held at Bletchley Park.

In it the monarch said that the risks of AI needed to be tackled with “a sense of urgency, unity and collective strength”.

“It was his speech on AI safety. He obviously cares very deeply about AI safety,” Mr Huang said.

Mr Huang said the King wrote in his speech that he believed in the “incredible capability” of the technology to transform the UK and the world.

“But he also wants to remind us that the technology could be used for good and for evil, and so to make sure we do everything we can to advance AI safety.”

In the King’s address he describes the development of advanced AI as “no less important than the discovery of electricity”.

On Wednesday, Jensen Huang received the the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering alongside six other foundational figures in AI, including Professors Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, who have warned that the technology poses an existential threat to humanity.

But US president Donald Trump has urged the AI sector to make rapid rather than cautious advances in the technology, and the AI Safety Summit was rebranded the AI Action Summit earlier this year.

The seven key figures in AI who received an award from the King - back row left to right: Yoshua Bengio; the King; Yan LeCunn; Geoffrey Hinton and front row, left to right: Jensen Huang; Fei-Fei Li; Bill Dally; and John Hopfield

Senator Howard Lutnick has discouraged the use of the word safety on the grounds that, “It makes us sound like we’re afraid”.

Mr Huang’s company, Nvidia, was valued at $5tn this week. It specialises in advanced computer chips including those which power AI.

Mr Huang added that in his view the UK is in a good position to take advantage of what he described as “an industrial revolution that’s happening right now.”

“It’s your opportunity to grasp,” he said.

Large US tech firms including Nvidia are investing billions of dollars in building AI infrastructure in the UK, in the form of enormous data centres, which Jensen Huang has called “AI factories”.

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