China’s Xi says AI should not be dominated by one country

“UNDER HUMAN CONTROL”

The four-day WAIC gathers more than 1,000 of China’s tech firms, officials, researchers and industry figures.

Around 3,000 products are on display, from powerful semiconductor systems for AI computing to a smartphone that can autonomously operate apps.

But eyes were first on Xi’s vision of how the world should handle the potential impacts of AI.

“We should put in place laws and regulations, technological monitoring, early warning, and emergency response systems, in order to… ensure AI is always under human control,” Xi told the conference, calling for a “people-centric” approach.

On Thursday, foreign minister Wang Yi and representatives from 29 countries including Russia, Pakistan and Indonesia agreed to establish an intergovernmental AI cooperation group.

The World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, headquartered in Shanghai, aims to ensure the “healthy and orderly” development of AI, state media reported.

“I can understand Western countries are absent from this initiative, because Europe already has its own AI act and the United States is already defining their regulations,” Lu said.

New York University business and technology professor Arun Sundararajan said “small glimmers of recent cooperation between Presidents Xi and Trump” were encouraging, but it was “hard to imagine there being a single approach to AI governance globally”.