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Opinion | Why the US should join China in future-proofing AI technology
- Both countries are leaders in artificial intelligence but neither can monopolise what is essentially a collaborative scientific effort. Far better to cooperate on creating a safe global regulatory environment and ensure AI benefits humanity
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Super-intelligent AI is still a way off but artificial intelligence already exceeds human capacity in many growing areas, sparking huge expectations about AI benefits and also fear and concern. Both the United States, the AI leader, and China, which is rapidly creating massive applications, should shoulder greater responsibilities for what needs to be done.
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But before we can talk about the future, we need to consider whether we are going to do it together or as enemies. Worsening US-China tensions cannot but have an impact on how we are going to deal with the challenges down the road. Will we work to make technology symbiotic to humans, help the world avoid technological risks and ensure technological advances to make our civilisations prosper? Or will we go our separate ways and use the technology to undermine, even hurt, the other side?
The US and Soviet Union went through many crises during the cold war, some threatening to doom mankind, before arriving at an arrangement for self-constraint and coexistence. The world today is more complicated and there is more at stake. Do we need a bigger crisis to help us find the right path? Can China and the US resolve their differences and coexist peacefully, or decouple, as some in Washington seek, and therefore tear the world apart?
After three decades of rapid industrialisation, China now finds itself among the top echelon in advanced technology and is increasingly aware of its rule-making responsibilities. The challenge with AI is for the government to meet the need for proper governance as soon as an application is developed. Beijing has therefore developed a policy that encourages advancement of industries while also providing guidelines.
Its AI governance expert committee, set up by the Ministry of Science and Technology in February, has released eight AI governance principles. They are harmony and human-friendliness, fairness and justice, inclusiveness and sharing, respect for privacy, security and controllability, shared responsibility, open collaboration, and agile governance.
To put these principles into practice, the government will set up 20 pilot zones by 2023, for testing and collecting feedback. Other measures include offering open platforms to encourage enterprises to formulate their own standards. Research and development projects will also be measured by the eight-point principle.
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