China Joins West To Talk AI Rules Amid Tech Rivalry

China joined Western world leaders at a major conference to voice concerns about the threat posed by artificial intelligence (AI).

The U.K. is hosting the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, where world leaders hope to develop a global framework on threats posed by rapidly advancing AI technologies.

In a rare move, China agreed to work with the U.S., UK, Brazil, India, and Saudi Arabia on a pledge, part of a communique, to make AI safe. Despite the geopolitical tensions, a Chinese delegation led by Wu Zhaohui, China's vice minister of science and technology, took to the stage with U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to develop strategies to keep pace with the evolution of AI.

The advancements in AI have brought up new geopolitical challenges, such as disinformation and generative content, that can disrupt society, the summit documents said.

Signed by 27 countries and the European Union (EU), the summit declaration drew attention to the emerging AI technologies, also called "frontier AI," which have been popularized via digital services like OpenAI's ChatGPT.

China's development of the public-facing frontier Large Language Models (LLM), similar to the one used by ChatGPT, has yet to catch up to the U.S. However, Chinese companies have advanced in deploying AI for facial recognition, a field where Beijing leads over other countries.

"Frontier AI" is defined in the summit documents as "highly capable general-purpose AI models that can perform a wide variety of tasks and match or exceed the capabilities present in today's most advanced models."

"We are especially concerned by such risks in domains such as cybersecurity and biotechnology, as well as where frontier AI systems may amplify risks such as disinformation." the summit declaration said.

The summit's Chinese delegation signaled an interest in working with other countries to promote AI governance.

"China believes that in the context of world peace and development facing multiple challenges, all countries should uphold a common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security concept, adhere to the principle of equal emphasis on development and security, build consensus through dialogue and cooperation," said a separate statement by the Chinese delegation.

China has a publicly funded program to advance the threshold AI technology to seek geopolitical advantages.

A group of Chinese scientists joined their counterparts at the summit and called for measures to create an international regulatory body on AI.

"Having learned lessons from coping with environmental damages, we should work together as a global community to ensure the safe progress of AI," said Andrew Yao, one of China's most prominent computer scientists, at the summit.

China is one of the leading developers and adopters of AI-related technologies, which has also been underscored by Chinese leadership as crucial for the country's economic growth. Beijing has particularly highlighted the need to integrate AI into advancing China's military capabilities, complicating the issue of AI governance.

A new investigation by Newsweek has revealed that the U.S. gave $30 million in federal grants to Song-Chun Zhu, former director of a pioneering AI center at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), who now works at the Peking University in Beijing.

While working at UCLA for over 18 years, Zhu set up a parallel institution in Wuhan, and was awarded the affiliation to the Thousand Talents Plan of the Chinese Communist Party. Thousand Talents is one of the many programs in China that is designed to transfer technology and knowledge from overseas.

The U.S. has repeatedly accused China of using forced technology transfer to gain economic and geopolitical edge, an accusation that China denies.