King Charles and Queen Camilla were seen attending Sunday service at Crathie Kirk near Balmoral ahead of the King's meeting this week with leading artificial intelligence executives, whom he intends to ask how the technology can be developed "for the good of humanity". The gathering, to be held in Scotland and overseen by the Ditchley Foundation, comes amid growing unease about AI's pace of development, including a warning from a former Anthropic researcher that the technology "could kill us all by the end of the decade".

Attendees are expected to include Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Google DeepMind's Sir Demis Hassabis, IonQ's Niccolo de Masi and the Vatican's AI adviser Paolo Benanti. A royal source said the King hopes to provide a "neutral space" for discussion and to explore whether a shared set of principles could guide AI's development around human dignity and benefit, similar to his past interventions on environmental issues. The summit follows a widely discussed essay by Anthropic chief Dario Amodei, who argued AI development must "slow down" to let safety measures catch up, warning that within six to twelve months the technology could be capable of coordinating attacks across the internet; his concerns have been echoed by figures including Elon Musk and Sam Altman.