King Charles III has warned technology leaders that artificial intelligence could pose serious risks if advanced systems fall into the wrong hands or are deployed without adequate safeguards.
He made the remarks at a summit at Dumfries House in Scotland involving government officials, technology executives and advisers.
Participants included representatives from major AI companies and institutions.
The King said the central challenge was not simply to advance technology but to ensure it remained in the service of humanity, communities and the natural world.
He called for discussion around shared principles to guide future AI development and use.
Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said safety should remain paramount and argued that companies should delay products that were not sufficiently safe.
He also defended open AI models as a way to broaden access for researchers, universities, start-ups and countries.
DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis offered a more cautious assessment, saying increasingly capable AI systems could arrive within a few years and that the probability of serious harm was not zero.
OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar similarly said AI could help solve difficult societal problems but that safety questions required cooperation across industry and government.
Nigerian AI scholar Celestine Iwendi used the debate to argue that countries such as Nigeria needed to invest more urgently in data infrastructure, computing capacity, research and local talent.
He said owning data centers alone would not be enough without control over data, skilled researchers and indigenous innovation.
Iwendi warned that countries failing to invest now risk remaining consumers rather than builders of AI technology.
He called for Africa to develop stronger domestic AI capacity alongside responsible governance and human oversight.
