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US-China relations
ChinaDiplomacy

Chinese and US experts agree that AI use in defence sector must be restricted

‘US-China competition would be better and more constructive if more people understood and perhaps embraced the Chinese approach’: Lee Kai-Fu

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At the US-China Hong Kong Forum, 01.AI founder Kai-Fu Lee, said Silicon Valley thinking caused the US government to believe that “as one company squashes other companies, one country will squash other countries” but that assumption “may not be correct”. Photo: Xinhua
Meredith ChenandFan Chen

Limiting AI use in military applications and ensuring global AI governance could ease collaboration and dialogue between China and the US as they vie for influence over the transformative technology, according to experts at a forum in Hong Kong on Monday.

Their remarks came as artificial intelligence is being increasingly adopted in the defence sector, including for weapon-related functions. It raises serious ethical and accountability concerns, further elevates the US-China AI race to a high-stakes geopolitical contest and adds to existing tensions over regulation standards, talent and access.

Sun Chenghao, a fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, said AI regulation in the military domain and global governance that aimed to address universal challenges could provide common ground for China and the US to foster bilateral cooperation.

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Speaking on the sidelines of the US-China Hong Kong Forum, Sun said the active engagement of major powers in governance was the basis for Global South countries to take part, but that tensions between China and the US, who led AI development, made effective AI governance cooperation “logically difficult”.

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At the annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in July, China proposed a global AI cooperation organisation be created and headquartered in Shanghai, marking a further step in advocacy for AI inclusiveness and equal access to the technology for the Global South.
During the forum, Christopher Nixon Cox, a board member of the Richard Nixon Foundation, told a panel discussion on the ethical and equitable application of emerging technologies that bioweapons were an “obvious area” where the US and China should work together to “limit the influence of AI”.
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“There is no good that would come out of having AI go off and develop bioweapons that are easy to replicate, or you can spread around the world,” he said.

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