The United States and China will meet in Geneva on Tuesday to discuss artificial intelligence, and U.S. officials stressed that Washington’s policies will be non-negotiable as talks explore ways to mitigate threats from the emerging technology.
President Joe Biden’s administration has sought to engage China on a range of issues to reduce miscommunication between the two rivals. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi raised the topic of artificial intelligence in April in Beijing, where they agreed to hold the first formal bilateral talks on the topic.
The State Department pressed China and Russia to come to terms with U.S. declarations that decisions about deploying nuclear weapons will be made only by humans, not artificial intelligence.
“This is the first meeting of this kind. So we expect to discuss the full scope of threats, but we are not finalizing any details at this stage,” a senior administration official told reporters before the meeting, asked whether the United States would prioritize the issue of nuclear weapons.
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China’s rapid deployment of artificial intelligence capabilities across the civilian, military and national security sectors often undermines the security of the United States and its allies, the official said, adding that the talks would allow Washington to directly convey its concerns.
“To be clear, discussions with Beijing are not focused on promoting any form of technical cooperation or frontier research cooperation on any issue. And our technology protection policy is non-negotiable,” the official added.
The U.S. delegation will include officials from the White House and the Departments of State and Commerce, the White House National Security Council (NSC) said on Monday.
Reuters reported that the Biden administration plans to put up barriers to U.S.-developed, proprietary artificial intelligence models that power popular chatbots such as ChatGPT in order to protect the technology from countries such as China and Russia.
At the second U.S. conference, reporters said Washington and Beijing were competing with each other to shape AI rules, but they also hoped to explore whether some rules could be “adopted by all countries.”
“We certainly disagree … on many topics and applications of artificial intelligence, but we believe that communicating about the critical risks of artificial intelligence can make the world safer,” the second official said.
NSC official Tarun Chhabra and Seth Center, the State Department’s acting special envoy for critical and emerging technologies, will lead the talks with officials from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the state planner, the National Development and Reform Commission.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to issue recommendations in the coming weeks on the dangers of artificial intelligence, which he says will then be translated into piecemeal legislation.
He cited competition with China and its divergent goals for artificial intelligence, including surveillance and facial recognition applications, as a reason Washington must take a leading role in regulating the rapidly developing technology.
Chinese authorities emphasize the need for the country to develop its own “controlled” artificial intelligence technology.
(Reporting by Michael Martina and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by David Gregorio)
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