Welcome back to What’s Happening in China, your weekly China brief.
As the leaders of the two most powerful nations in the world prepare to meet, debate over the risks of AI intensified this week.
After OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Fortune last week that “Presidents Trump and Xi would get the Nobel Peace Prize together if they could agree on something that should be easy to agree to,” Anthropic’s Dario Amodei shared an essay on why the AI industry should slow down. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” he warns. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
With the U.S. and China locked in an intense technological competition, Amodei recommends that the “US and other democratic governments attempt to coordinate with authoritarian governments, to the extent this is possible, while taking seriously the challenges of verifying compliance.”
“Global pacing will require cooperation with China, the autocratic country with by far the most advanced AI capabilities.”
— Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic
Elon Musk responded: “Dario is right.”
On Monday, Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, responding to a question by Reuters, dismissed Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk’s concerns: “Fear-mongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only hamper efforts toward sound global AI governance, which serves no one’s interest.”
Meanwhile, Chen Yixin, China’s minister of state security, wrote in a piece shared on Sunday that “various hostile forces” use AI to wage “a propaganda war and a cognitive war against us, directly threatening our political security, institutional security, and ideological security,” signaling no interest in slowing AI development.
Trump, too, showed no interest in slowing the U.S. AI push: “Look, we’re leading China in AI... and, frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.”
Tomorrow, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng will meet in New York, and AI will be on the table, with discussions including “both open- and closed-weight models,” according to a statement by Bessent.
Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., set the right expectations for the upcoming summit: “If nothing goes horribly wrong—and Xi expresses faux admiration at the White House’s new helipad—the two sides will consider the gathering a success. But others should not.”
Let’s jump into it.
— PC
Through the Lens
In Focus
I. Nobody wants to slow the AI race
Generally speaking, China doesn’t fret as much about A.I. as an existential threat to humanity. You don’t see its political leaders or the founders of Chinese A.I. companies warning that superhuman A.I. is “probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity,” as Mr. Altman wrote in 2015. It’s not central to Chinese A.I. policymaking, nor a part of Chinese tech culture.
That’s mainly because of differences in how the two countries think about A.I. training and development. The leading American A.I. companies are hyper-focused on advancing “recursive self-improvement” — using A.I. systems themselves to develop even better A.I. systems. There are fears that this feedback loop could accelerate the pace of A.I. development to the point where humans no longer have control over the process. American tech leaders believe this takeoff point might be around the corner.
Chinese A.I. companies are also working on recursive self-improvement. But because of their limited access to A.I. computing power and the slower pace of progress, they believe the takeoff moment is still technologically a long way off. Chinese policymakers seem to share that outlook and so are more focused on building resilient A.I. supply chains and increasing A.I. adoption throughout the economy.
So why would the Chinese agree to a slowdown in A.I. development if they don’t think a crisis is imminent? If anything, Chinese A.I. companies are trying to move faster, hoping to narrow the performance gap with American A.I. models.
Read: America and China Look at A.I. and See Very Different Problems (The New York Times)
Related:
Editorial: ‘Dr Frankenstein’ alarm cries of US’ AI elites a self-serving bid for profit (China Daily)
China’s AI leaders keep quiet despite U.S. ‘publicity’ on tech risks (CNBC)
US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say (CNN)
AI military risks spark concern at China security conference (Reuters)
The US and China are hurtling toward Kissinger’s worst AI nightmare (Semafor)
The ‘But China!’ Dilemma Driving the A.I. Race (The New York Times)
To bargain with China, the US needs to regulate AI (Paper Tiger by Julian Gewirtz, Transformer)
