Beijing – The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded this Monday to the call by the director of Anthropic for the United States to curb China’s capabilities in artificial intelligence, a call he made when advocating a global slowdown in the development of AI.
The president of the United States is expectedDonald Trumpand the Chinese leader, Xi Jinpingaddress, among other topics, the regulation of artificial intelligence in a meeting scheduled for September 24.
The CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodeiwarned in a lengthy article published on Saturday that “Chinese leadership in AI would pose a serious danger to the United States and the world.” He advocated maintaining restrictions on the sale of cutting-edge AI chips and manufacturing equipment to China, in order to preserve the United States’ advantage in this area.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to a question about Amodei’s article by saying that all parties should collaborate on artificial intelligence.
“Scaremongering, confrontation and unfair competition will only hinder the global AI governance process, which benefits no one”spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a regular press conference on Monday.
On Sunday, Trump downplayed calls for his administration to intervene to slow the development of artificial intelligence, saying that the United States was ahead of China in this area and that “whoever wins in artificial intelligence, wins.”
Amodei also predicted that a swarm of AI “agents” could take over the Internet within six to 12 months, unless researchers agree to slow the pace. He stated that “regulating the pace globally will require cooperation with China, the autocratic country that has by far the most advanced AI capabilities.”
Trump and Xi could address AI governance at summit
The US president is expected to address issues such as the regulation of artificial intelligence in the meeting scheduled for late September with Xi.
Chinese companies have developed powerful artificial intelligence models that are often cheaper to use than advanced models from US-based companies, although by some measures they are just as effective.
China’s Xi has called for establishing a global AI governance framework among countries in the Global South, while presenting China as a pioneer in creating an open source AI community.
The head of China’s Ministry of State Security has also called, in a recent article, for “accelerating the creation of a system to prevent and manage security risks related to artificial intelligence.”
Beijing accuses the United States of trying to stop it
In an editorial published on Sunday, the Chinese state newspaper “Global Times” criticized Amodei’s article as a veiled call to “contain” China. He stated that while at first glance Amodei’s article may seem focused on global AI security, it is “replete with containment measures directed against China and is, in essence, a ‘Cold War manual’ for the AI sector.”
Amodei’s article was published a few days after the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency last week issued a joint cybersecurity advisory stating that Chinese AI developers had undertaken “aggressive and malicious” efforts to extract, or “distill,” capabilities from some of the United States’ most advanced AI models, such as Anthropic’s “Claude” and OpenAI’s “GPT.”
China’s Ministry of Commerce dismissed the US accusations as unfounded and said “distillation” is a technique commonly used by many artificial intelligence companies. In addition, he noted that the United States pursues a “monopoly in the artificial intelligence sector.”
Both China and the United States want to “make sure that the other side cannot create a technological choke point on them,” said Lizzi C. Lee, a researcher at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Analysis Center.
“So, from Beijing’s point of view, an obvious question arises: If the United States wants China to cooperate on border security and, at the same time, restricts its access to computing at the border, what exactly does that cooperation consist of?” Lee said.
This story was translated from English to Spanish with an artificial intelligence tool and was reviewed by an editor before publication.