China proposes new global AI cooperation organisation
China said on Saturday it wanted to create an organisation to foster global cooperation on artificial intelligence, positioning itself as an alternative to the U.S. as the two vie for influence over the transformative technology.
China wants to help coordinate global efforts to regulate fast-evolving AI technology and share the country’s advances, Premier Li Qiang told the annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai.
The three-day Shanghai conference brings together industry leaders and policymakers at a time of escalating technological competition between China and the United States – the world’s two largest economies – with AI emerging as a key battleground.
President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday released an AI blueprint aiming to vastly expand U.S. AI exports to allies in a bid to maintain the American edge over China in the critical technology.
China wants AI to be openly shared and for all countries and companies to have equal rights to use it, Li said, adding that Beijing was willing to share its development experience and products with other countries, particularly the “Global South”. The Global South refers to developing, emerging or lower-income countries, mostly in the southern hemisphere.
How to regulate AI’s growing risks was another concern, Li said, adding that bottlenecks included an insufficient supply of AI chips and restrictions on talent exchange.
“Overall global AI governance is still fragmented. Countries have great differences particularly in terms of areas such as regulatory concepts, institutional rules,” he said. “We should strengthen coordination to form a global AI governance framework that has broad consensus as soon as possible.”
