Saturday, 19 September 2026
TWIGGY - Official Trailer (2026) Documentary
Forever
Twiggy
The face
of London in the 1960s is living her best life at the age of 77.
Rhonda
Garelick
By Rhonda
Garelick
Published
Sept. 16, 2026
Updated
Sept. 17, 2026, 1:35 p.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/style/twiggy-documentary.html
When
16-year-old Lesley Hornby, the British model known for her skinny frame,
freckles, blond pixie cut and blue eyes fringed with heavy false lashes, was
discovered in 1966 by a fashion editor, her look hit like a lightning bolt.
Twiggy,
as she was instantly renamed, was nothing like the models popular at that time
— sultry, mature, upper class-coded women like Jean Shrimpton. She was from a
working-class family — her father was a carpenter. At 5-foot-6 she was petite
and almost childlike.
“I didn’t
look like the models of that day,” Twiggy, now nearly 77, said over coffee last
week at Bottino restaurant in Manhattan. “Girls from working-class families
didn’t become models.”
But a new
era was dawning in the 1960s; music and fashion were all about youth, openness
and social mobility. Twiggy seemed to embody London’s youthquake, and its mod
scene, telegraphing fresh energy and new possibilities.
Twiggy’s
famous face launched a thousand commodities, a marketing tool for cosmetics,
clothes and lunch boxes. But her real-life story, which unfolds in the director
Sadie Frost’s thoughtful 2025 documentary, “Twiggy: The Woman Behind the Icon,”
which arrives in America this month, continued long after the youthquake
subsided.
An
Unusual Celebrity Story
It’s easy
to see traces of the young Twiggy in her still youthful face. Her hair remains
blond; bangs still frame her blue eyes. And she still goes by the moniker
Twiggy.
Aging
doesn’t bother her. “I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I look
like,” she said. “If you start getting into that, about, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got
this wrinkle and that wrinkle…’” She trailed off, but her point was clear: She
is comfortable in her skin.
Rather
than flatten herself to fit her cartoonlike status, Twiggy used fame to explore
myriad art forms over a 60-year career, including film, theater, fashion
design, dance and singing, proving gifted at all of them.
After
four years as a model, working with photographers including Barry Lategan
(whose early photos first got Twiggy noticed), Cecil Beaton, Bert Stern,
Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton, she moved on to cinema. The director Ken
Russell was so impressed with her that, although she had no acting, singing or
dancing experience, he cast her as the lead in his 1971 film musical, “The Boy
Friend,” opposite co-stars Christopher Gable, who’d danced with the Royal
Ballet, and Tommy Tune, already a Broadway star. Russell sent her to singing
and dance classes, which she plunged into with enthusiasm.
She
learned to tap in a year. “It was harder for Chris Gable to learn tap than for
me, because ballet dancers do everything turned out,” she said, remembering
with a laugh that she’d had an advantage in this over her professional ballet
star colleague.
That film
role earned Twiggy two Golden Globes. She went on to star on the London stage
and appeared in dozens of films and television shows. She recorded albums and
designed fashion lines. In 1983, she co-starred with her old friend Tommy Tune
in a Broadway revival of the Gershwin musical, “My One and Only,” which earned
her a Tony nomination.
“He’s
another one who changed my life,” she said of Tune. “He always takes my breath
away. He’s elegance personified.”
Frost’s
documentary shows Twiggy coping with crowds lunging toward her, talk show hosts
leeringly asking about her body, and even an interview, while still a teen,
with Woody Allen, who badgers her with condescending questions, including
“Who’s your favorite philosopher?” Twiggy met every situation with polite but
firm answers. “Who’s your favorite philosopher?” she asks Allen, stunning him
into silence.
Poised
and Protected
What
explains such poise? Twiggy’s eyes filled as she gestured heavenward and
replied, “One hundred percent Norman,” referring to the father she adored. “Dad
became my rock when Mum would go into hospital,” she explained. Nell Hornby
struggled with mental illness throughout Twiggy’s childhood, disappearing
periodically into psychiatric wards, leaving Norman to care for their three
daughters. (Twiggy was the youngest.) “He kept me kind of away from it,” she
said. “Protected.”
Perhaps
even more important was the steadfast love Norman showed his ill wife. Twiggy
recalls that, when asked why he “put up with Nell,” Norman would simply say,
“Because I love her.”
In
addition to her father, she found a protector during her early modeling years
in her then-boyfriend and manager, Justin de Villeneuve, who despite his
evident peccadilloes, kept her safe. “He looked after me,” she said. “I was a
kid, but nobody touched me.”
Twiggy
weathered other storms over the years, especially the sudden death of her first
husband, the actor Michael Witney, when their daughter Carly was just turning
five. Happily remarried for nearly four decades to the actor, writer and
director Leigh Lawson, she’s a doting grandmother to Carly’s two children and
surrounded by adoring friends, many of whom figure in Frost’s film, including
Dustin Hoffman, Fran Drescher (whose show, “The Nanny” was inspired by her
friendship with Twiggy), the actress Joanna Lumley, Paul McCartney and Stella
McCartney (who designed the cream tuxedo Twiggy wore in 2019 to receive her
damehood at Buckingham Palace).
The day
we met she wore a cream blouse, maroon and cream patterned pants by Zara, white
trainers and a maroon leather jacket from her erstwhile midpriced Twiggy line
at Marks & Spencer. “I’m not a big high-end fashion buyer,” she said,
adding: “I can’t wear high heels. I hate them.”
Her
obvious ease with herself accounts for her ongoing appeal, to women in her own
age bracket and even to very young people. The majority of Twiggy’s fan mail,
which she answers herself, comes, she said, from 14- to 25-year-olds. This is
likely due in part to the perennial interest in ’60s fashion, but it speaks
also to the timeless quality of that “Twiggy” icon, or as she describes her
image, “this little person who kind of sits on my shoulder and never goes
away.”
Rhonda
Garelick is the founding director of the Institute for Public Humanities and
Arts at Hofstra University, where she is also a distinguished professor of
literature. She is the author of “Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of
History,” the forthcoming “Why Fashion Matters” and other books.
Earl Spencer doubles down on claims about ‘monstrous’ call with Charles after Diana’s death
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Earl Spencer doubles down on claims about ‘monstrous’ call
with Charles after Diana’s death
Buckingham
Palace has rebutted claim by Charles Spencer, Diana’s brother, that then prince
told him ‘we’ll forget her soon enough’
Fri 18
Sep 2026 18.40 BST
Earl
Spencer has doubled down on his bombshell claim that King Charles said of Diana, Princess of Wales, “rest
assured, we’ll forget her soon enough” days after her death, saying he is
telling the truth.
The
alleged comments, revealed in Charles Spencer’s memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My
Sister, which is being serialised in the Daily Mail, prompted Buckingham Palace
to issue an extraordinary statement suggesting Diana’s brother had
misremembered events, saying “the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason,
affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise”.
In an
interview with the BBC, Spencer stood firm in his recollection, telling Laura
Kuenssberg: “I can tell you here and now, those are exactly the words he said.”
Responding
to the palace’s statement, Spencer said: “Well, is he furious? Is he furious,
or is he embarrassed?” When asked about the inference that his memory was
coloured, Spencer said: “They’ve sort of smudged that one, haven’t they? They’ve
said that recollections may vary.”
Diana
died in a car crash in 1997, at the age of 36. Photograph: Simon
Kreitem/Reuters
Spencer
said the call was one of two he had with Charles in his lifetime and said he
told his friends and family members at the time about the comment “because it
was so monstrous”.
The
alleged comment was revealed on Wednesday in an extract from the memoir
published in the Daily Mail. The comment by the then prince was allegedly made
during a heated argument over funeral arrangements. Spencer says it reflected
Charles’s “pent-up
contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her
death”, the Daily Mail reported.
Among
other claims in the book are that Diana told a friend on the eve of her wedding
to Charles that he said he was happy to marry her, but was not actually in love
with her.
On
Friday, the second extract from the memoir was published. Spencer writes
Charles was “polite and formal” on the day of Diana’s funeral and says Prince
Philip told him to look ahead while walking in unison alongside his nephews and
former brother-in-law.
“It was
hellish, entering that tunnel of grief, particularly because we were unable to
put a face to it by looking at the individuals in the crowd,” said Spencer of
the procession.
From
left: Prince Philip, Prince William, Charles Spencer, Prince Harry and King
Charles, then a prince, walking in Diana’s funeral procession. Photograph: Jeff
J Mitchell/AP
In the
extract released on Wednesday, Spencer says he insisted to Charles that Diana
would not have wanted her sons, Prince William, then 15, and Prince Harry, then
12, to walk in her funeral procession. In the end, her sons walked behind her
coffin, which William later called “one of the hardest things I’ve ever done”.
Spencer
wrote that when one of Queen Elizabeth’s most senior aides told him in the days
before the funeral that William and Harry would take part in the procession, he
responded: “That’s not going to happen.”
But
minutes later he received a phone call from Charles, who insisted it should. It
was during the ensuing argument between the two men that Charles allegedly made
the comment, with Spencer writing: “‘Rest assured,’” he hissed, ‘we’ll forget
her soon enough!’”
Spencer
wrote that he was stunned and took a few seconds to reply, writing: “‘I can’t
believe you just said that,’ I said flatly, before hanging up.”
Spencer
also claimed that Diana “never would have wanted” her sons to walk behind her
coffin, to which Charles allegedly replied: “That’s the problem with your
family. They’ve got no bloody sense of duty.”
Swan Song
is due to be published globally next Tuesday – in the UK by Penguin Michael
Joseph, a division of Penguin Random House.
Four
copies of the Dutch-language edition were reportedly taken from a truck while
it was en route from the Dutch publisher’s printers to their warehouse in the
Netherlands.
Diana,
who died aged 36 after a car crash in Paris in 1997, would have turned 65 on 1
July this year.
Buckingham
Palace did not issue a statement responding to the BBC interview, but on
Wednesday a spokesperson said: “While we do not comment on books as a matter of
principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud
reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even
many years after such a loss.”
Friday, 18 September 2026
Palace Response To Earl Spencer Is ‘As Polite And Elegant’ As Saying ‘You’re Lying’ | Valentine Low
Charles’s
rebuttal of Earl Spencer’s claim about Diana offers rare glimpse into palace
thinking
From
‘there were three of us in this marriage’ to ‘recollections may vary’, a lot
can be conveyed with a carefully worded phrase
Thu 17
Sep 2026 15.47 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/sep/17/charles-earl-spencer-diana-royal-statements
As
denials go, King
Charles’s response to Earl Spencer’s allegations that Charles said after
Diana’s death, “We’ll forget her soon enough”, was a masterclass in the
diplomatic royal rebuke.
Rarely
has Buckingham Palace responded to claims in countless books on royalty. But it
was straight out of the block on this one.
Little
over an hour after the Daily Mail, which is serialising Spencer’s memoir Swan
Song about his sister, the late Diana,
Princess of Wales, had published its first extract online, a statement was
issued.
Charles,
the headline claimed, had told Spencer days after Diana’s death and during a
heated row over funeral arrangements: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon
enough.”
The
king’s swift countering, that “the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason,
affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many
years after such a loss”, will enter the canon of carefully constructed regal
pushbacks.
Charles’s
swift rebuke suggests the palace acknowledged the damage Spencer’s claim could
do and needed to set the record straight. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters
As
rebukes go, it is up there with the
late Queen Elizabeth II’s “some recollections may vary” in response to a
torrent of allegations from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in their Oprah
Winfrey interview.
Senior
courtiers are often drawn from the diplomatic service and thus highly-skilled
in couching the passive-aggressive denial. Deploying delicate language to
devastating effect is a stock in trade at the Foreign Office.
But it is
a weapon to be used sparingly. The royal mantra is, usually, “never complain,
never explain”.
However,
Charles’s former communications secretary Julian Payne said: “This is a much
more personal situation, given its author, and therefore has a greater ability
to do harm.”
That is
why the palace “felt the need to set the record straight and deny these remarks
have been made”, Payne told the BBC’s Today programme. Given the amount of
things the palace don’t comment on, “you can imagine the strength of feeling”,
he added.
Payne
remains close to the king and was due to be sitting alongside him at Thursday’s
AI summit just hours later, so the fact he felt able to speak so freely
suggests his robust defence of Charles came with official sanction.
What is
said behind palace doors usually remains private. The language may be less
sensitive. But a carefully chosen phrase in public pulls back the privacy
screen.
When
Diana, in her highly controversial Panorama interview, said “there were three
of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded”, she reaped public revenge on
her then husband and Camilla.
In
return, Diana found herself on the sharp end of Elizabeth’s ire weeks later.
After Diana failed to respond to the queen’s request that the couple divorce, a
palace spokesperson issued a statement: “After considering the present
situation, the queen wrote to both the prince and princess earlier this week
and gave them her view, supported by the Duke of Edinburgh, that an early
divorce is desirable.” The matter was now, officially, out of Diana’s hands.
Harry and
Meghan during their interview with Oprah in 2021, which led to the late queen’s
‘recollections may vary’ statement. Photograph: Reuters
White
fury was behind the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s statement in February 2021:
“We can all live a life of service. Service is universal.” It was read as a
succinct and direct challenge to the late queen’s insistence they could not
keep their public service roles after stepping down as working royals.
Meghan
was less direct in a 2019 interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby in which he asked her
if she was OK juggling life as a royal with a newborn, Prince Archie. “Thank
you for asking, because not many people have asked if I’m OK,” she replied. Was
it directed at the palace and the institution? A huge number of the claims the
Sussexes later made, in TV interviews and in Harry’s memoir Spare, were that
the duchess had been unsupported throughout her time as a working royal.
One royal
famously deficient in the art of the diplomatic royal rebuke, however, was the
late Duke of Edinburgh. Philip was renowned for his gaffes. When a BBC
journalist politely asked the queen at a banquet at the Élysée Palace if she
was enjoying her stay in Paris in 2006, Philip dispensed with tact to snap:
“Damn fool question!”
Earl Spencer’s Diana Claims Have ‘Torn’ The Royal Family Apart | Jennie Bond
Swan Song: Diana, My Sister
In Swan
Song, Charles Spencer provides the most intimate, loving and honest portrait
yet of his sister.
Beautiful.
Beloved. Hunted. The extraordinary life and death of Diana, as told by her
brother, Charles – available to pre-order now.
‘When
asked, ‘What was it like, growing up with Diana?’, my first thought is always,
But I don’t know what it was like not to grow up with her…’
In
September 1997, Charles Spencer stood in Westminster Abbey before a watching
world and shared his grief at losing his beloved sister, Diana. Now, nearly
thirty years later, he tells the astonishing story of his life with Diana and
the tragic week of her death.
Thursday, 17 September 2026
JEEVES and his Garden.
This is our second garden where we live in the
summer.
The whole garden was transformed into a small
forest.
Greetings
from JEEVES (António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho)
Wednesday, 16 September 2026
Remembering our first garden: A day in the garden, by JEEVES (António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho)
A few years
ago these images were taken at my daughter, Fleur , small house.
At present
we have a small house of our own with a garden developed by my wife Trudie.
JEEVES.
Tuesday, 15 September 2026
The battle to save the dying heart of rural France: the village bistro
The
battle to save the dying heart of rural France: the village bistro
Kim Willsher in Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne
‘People
seem really happy it’s open again.’ The Au Bon Accueil restaurant in
Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne. Photograph: Ed Alcock/The Guardian
Once
central to rural life, cafe-bistros are closing in the face of depopulation and
falling alcohol consumption, but campaigners are seeking new ways forward
Sun 13
Sep 2026 05.00 BST
It is
just past noon on a midweek day, and already every table at Au Bon Acceuil
cafe-bistro in the northern Burgundy village of Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne is
taken.
The
three-course lunch menu today – including a choice of a hefty chunk of steak
with chips or a meaty lasagne – is just €18, but villagers are not only here
for the food.
After an
eight-month closure, the bistro, previously called Café de la Gare, recently
reopened – and locals want it to stay that way.
“It’s so
important to have a cafe-bistro in a village like this. We couldn’t let it stay
closed,” said Nadia Letellier, the new manager. “And we’re doing well, as you
can see. People seem really happy it’s open again.”
Nadine
Letellier, the new manager of the Au Bon Accueil restaurant in
Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne. Photograph: Ed Alcock/The Guardian
Hervé
Chapuis, a farmer and the village mayor, is part of the local council team that
saved Saint-Martin’s last public-facing business since the boulangerie across
the road closed eight years ago.
“People
come here every morning to have a coffee and a chat,” he said. “Our aim is to
keep this kind of business open to support the social fabric. It’s part of
village life and people missed it. Now, village life has returned to its proper
rhythm.”
France’s
celebrated cafe-bistros are in trouble. In 1900 there were an estimated 500,000
such establishments; by the 1960s more than half had closed. Today, only about
30,000-40,000 remain and even they are reportedly
shutting at a rate of two a day.
Alain
Fontaine, who runs Le Mesturet bistro near Paris’s stock exchange, and who is
president of France’s Association of Bistros and Cafes, says the closures leave
rural communities deserted and villagers, especially elderly people, isolated.
“Every
day, the art of living we enjoy in our bistros is gradually disappearing from
our communities,” Fontaine said. “Villages are being left like deserts with no
shops, no businesses, nothing. In losing our local bistros, cafes and
restaurants, we are losing part of the French life balance.”
The
reasons for the closures of what the 19th-century writer and statesman Léon
Gambetta called “salons de la démocratie” or “people’s parliaments”, are
economic and sociological. The number of people living in rural areas has
declined over the last half a century, television and devices encourage more
people to spend their evenings at home, and the average French person now
drinks about 80 litres of alcohol a year compared with 200 litres in the 1960s.
Finding
people willing to run bars, cafes or bistros is also a problem, says Fontaine,
who is campaigning for the government to submit the establishments to Unesco
for intangible
cultural heritage listing, arguing this recognition would encourage more
people to consider taking them on.
“Without
a cafe or bistro, communities are effectively deprived of any social life. We
cannot resign ourselves to this trend,” he said. “In bistros and cafes, people
don’t just eat and drink, they catch up with each other, meet new people,
debate, laugh, read, write and sometimes fall in love.
“This is
a way of life and an expression of freedom unique to France, something that
tourists from all over the world come to seek out in Paris, in other major
cities, and our villages.”
Customers
in the Au Bon Accueil restaurant in Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne. Photograph: Ed
Alcock/The Guardian
Solène
Joucla, whose family have run the historic Le Grand Café at Camplong, in the
Hérault near Montpellier, since 1898, faced having to let it close or give up
her job as a high-school English teacher when her father, Pierre, retired.
Instead, she and her sister, Katell, set up an association to run it.
“We
closed for three years after Covid, which was a difficult period, and opened in
September last year. We wanted to find someone to take it over and run it, but
it’s a small village of 220 people and it was complicated. Now we run [it] with
volunteers,” Joucla said.
“Our aim
is to encourage people to go out so they are not isolated, and so we know how
they are doing. People come here for a chat, to have a laugh, listen to music …
we are the cultural centre of the village.
“My
sister and I grew up in this bar and have plenty of memories here. We’re
fighting to keep its place at the heart of the village, but it’s a daily
challenge just to stay open. And not just for us; this is a battle that’s
happening all over France.”
Customers
at the bar of the Au Bon Accueil restaurant. Photograph: Ed Alcock/The Guardian
A report
submitted to the French senate in 2023 suggested the government should ease
regulations on small rural café-bistros, hotels and restaurants. It pointed out
the negative impact of the widespread closure of such places on rural
communities, concluding their presence contributed to “economic vitality and
social cohesion”.
The
National Federation of Country Bistros says “rural bistros are unique as places
for socialising, building community ties, exploring new experiences and
fostering local cultural life. Often, these bistros are the only local service
providers still operating in villages.” It adds: “Supporting the village bistro
means helping to keep it alive, so the heart of our countryside continues to
beat.”
A recent report by
Oxford Economics, examining the economic and social contribution of bars
and pubs to communities in five markets, including the UK and US, concluded
they had “a central role … in bringing people together and supporting social
connection”.
In
France, the 1,000 Cafés association was set up in 2020 to combat the “social
fracture” highlighted by the gilets
jaunes protest movement by helping communes of fewer than 3,500 people save
their cafes or open new ones. It found more than 60% of people in rural
villages had no local commerce, and this left many feeling abandoned and
ignored.
Camille
Sebaux, the director of 1,000 Cafés, told
France Info radio the association had worked in more than 300 communities,
often helping cafes to diversify by stocking food essentials, or becoming
drop-off points for online shopping deliveries.
“Cafes
have been closing in villages for the last 50 years, and we don’t have any
magic wand or miracle answer,” Sebaux said. “Plus, running a village cafe is
not an easy job. Our aim is to help small communities find solutions.”
People
dining in a square in the village of Collobrières, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte
d’Azur region. Photograph: niceartphoto/Alamy
Aurélien
Pécot, the mayor of the 14 villages and small towns, including
Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne, that make up the Charny-Orée-de-Puisaye commune in the
Yonne department, ran a bistro for seven years before being elected this year.
He says he believed they are essential in a rural community.
“I
noticed the same people would come in every morning at the same time, take the
same table, the same coffee or a glass of white wine. The cafe-bistro was their
point of reference. If it disappears, there is nothing for them,” he says.
His local
authority owns five properties in the area – the Saint-Martin bistro, a
restaurant and three boulangeries – and spent €25,000 on essential works at Au
Bon Acceuil before it reopened. Local officials also advised Letellier on
setting up the business.
Pécot
says many recall a time when almost every village had a bar, cafe, bistro and
boulangerie, but says this is no longer realistic or economically viable in
many cases.
“It’s
taxpayers’ money we are spending saving these places, so people have to see
it’s being well spent. Not every village can have its own bistro,” he says.
Left to
right: Local politicians Hervé Chapuis, Nicole Deviterne, and Arnault Meric in
front of the Au Bon Accueil restaurant in Saint-Martin-sur-Ouanne. Photograph:
Ed Alcock/The Guardian
Over an
aperitif at Au Bon Acceuil, Nicole Deviterne, the mayor of a neighbouring
village without a cafe-bistro, said: “It’s an element of village life that’s
extremely important. It’s a way of combating rural isolation, but there has to
be a real willingness of local people and local councils to save these places,
to make villages live again.”
Monday, 14 September 2026
King Charles Will Convene A.I. Leaders Amid Calls to Slow Development
King
Charles Will Convene A.I. Leaders Amid Calls to Slow Development
As alarm
from the highest echelons of A.I. companies mounts, Buckingham Palace said the
king would meet with executives to explore how the technology can be used for
good.
King
Charles III of Britain in Cambridge, England, in July.Credit...Pool photo by
Joe Giddens
By Ephrat Livni
Sept. 13,
2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/world/europe/king-charles-ai-meeting.html
King
Charles III of Britain will meet with leaders from major artificial
intelligence companies this week in Scotland amid mounting fears that rapid,
unchecked development of the technology could lead to a global catastrophe.
The king
will convene leaders from companies including Nvidia, Google, DeepMind, OpenAI
and Anthropic, as well as government officials and others, “to discuss how A.I.
can be developed and deployed in ways that benefit society,” according to a
statement from Buckingham Palace. They will meet in Ayrshire, in southwest
Scotland, at Dumfries House, the headquarters of the King’s Foundation, an
educational charity.
The
gathering comes as A.I. insiders and chief executives of some of the industry’s
most powerful companies have
raised alarms about these tools and how quickly they are developing. Some
have called for the creation of shared guidelines and a deliberately
slower pace of progress to ensure humans can keep up.
Charles’s
meeting on A.I. will explore how the technology can be used for good, to
“strengthen communities and improve lives,” the statement from Buckingham
Palace said.
The
palace did not say who would be attending from the A.I. companies listed in its
statement, and Anthropic, DeepMind, Google and Nvidia did not immediately
respond to requests for comment confirming their participation. OpenAI said
that Sarah Friar, its chief financial officer, would be attending.
The
current concern about A.I.’s rapid advance was prompted
in great part by a hack this summer into Hugging Face, an A.I.
infrastructure company, orchestrated by a group of A.I. agents created by
OpenAI. The OpenAI agents swarmed Hugging Face’s systems, stealing data,
gaining control of a server and attempting to cover their tracks.
That hack
— and another similar incident within OpenAI shortly afterward — drastically
raised fears about how quickly machines might escape human control, with
potentially devastating effects.
Dario
Amodei, the chief executive of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic,
published a 3,800-word open letter on Saturday calling for slower
development of A.I. In addition to the Hugging Face hack, he cited as a concern
the fact that current A.I. models are increasingly able to build the next
generation of A.I. tools. Mr. Amodei said that dynamic, known as recursive
self-improvement, “could outrun our ability to understand and control these
systems” if left unchecked.
Dumfries
House, headquarters of the King’s Foundation near Cumnock, Scotland, in
January.Credit...Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The
meeting between Charles and A.I. leaders will be facilitated by a British
nonprofit, the Ditchley Foundation, and will include Kanishka Narayan,
Britain’s minister for A.I., according to Buckingham Palace. Representatives
from charitable organizations founded by the king, including the King’s Trust,
a youth charity, and the Sustainable Markets Initiative, a network of global
chief executives, will also attend, the palace added.
Mr.
Amodei’s essay on Saturday — which quickly reverberated around the internet —
received support from other A.I. company chiefs, including Sam
Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of xAI, which is part of SpaceX, Mr. Musk’s
rocket and satellite company.
Mr.
Amodei urged A.I. companies and regulators around the world to work together on
a thoughtful approach to developing the technology and proposed his own
three-step plan. His proposals included allowing third-party evaluators to
embed in frontier A.I. companies to monitor growth and report incidents, and
coordinating among companies in democratic countries to establish common safety
standards. “To the extent possible,” he said, democratic countries and
authoritarian governments should also try to coordinate and pace global
development.
The essay
was published just a few days after Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic engineer who
previously worked for OpenAI, resigned
from his job and declared on social media that the companies claimed to be
concerned about rapid development but were nonetheless hurtling toward
“superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight,
and acquire real power and resources.”
Ephrat Livni is a Times
reporter covering news around the world. She is based in New York.
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