Mutual Distrust Stopping US & China Coorperation

Washington and Beijing both are concerned about artificial intelligence, but it is unlikely to ease tensions between two powers, as fierce competition and deep-rooted mistrust undermine the kinds of partnerships experts believe are necessary to confront the technology’s dangers. As President-elect Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping prepare to meet in Washington, D.C., next week, AI figures to be a major point of contention in the worsening rivalry between the United States and China.

The immediate problem is a chorus of American AI executives and academics who urge companies to slow down the pace of innovation, citing recent scandals in which AI systems have taken over human decisions. Trump has ridiculed their counsel.

Meanwhile, China is forging ahead, emboldened by the perception that many in the U.S. industrial and political establishment believe it is poised to win the AI contest, said George Chen, a partner at the Asia Group, a political risk consultancy based in Hong Kong. In a phone interview on Tuesday, Chen noted that what happens in the United States does not matter to China, where industrial and government officials believe they are in the endgame of a long march toward AI predominance.

Instead of scaling back, China has promoted its “open-weight” AI models as a diplomatic tool, portraying the technology as a public good. At a BRICS summit in India on Sunday, Xi offered to help the 11 nations forming the bloc build their own open-source AI systems and persuaded them to join Beijing’s AI governance initiative.

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On the security front, Chen Yixin, China’s minister of state security, warned readers of the state-backed China Cybersecurity Magazine the same day as the BRICS meeting that malicious actors are exploiting deepfake computer imagery, AI-generated text and bot farms to wage disinformation campaigns around the world. In an ominous sign, he said, adversaries could use AI to launch computer attacks against China’s infrastructure, adding that countries with AI advantages might seek to monopolize the technology, a clear reference to the United States.