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Chinese and U.S. officials will hold the first meeting on Tuesday of a dialogue on artificial intelligence that President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping agreed to at their summit in San Francisco last year.
U.S. officials announced that the two countries would meet in Geneva, following earlier talks on the issue between U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
“While our approach to China remains focused on ‘investing, collaborating and competing,’ we also recognize that intense competition requires intense diplomacy to reduce the risk of miscalculation and unforeseen conflict. This is especially true for AI,” one US official said.
Another US official said the Biden administration recognizes the “transformative potential” of AI, but also recognizes “the need to balance risk management with seizing the opportunities that advanced AI provides.” He said there was.
The U.S. delegation will be led by Tarun Chhabra, senior director for technology and national security at the National Security Council, and the State Department’s Seth Center for Critical and Emerging Technologies.
A second U.S. official said the conference would focus on advanced AI systems and focus on risk and safety, but would not be aimed at delivering results.
In addition to discussions on the role of international governance, the official said the United States will outline its stance on addressing AI risks and explain its approach to AI safety norms and principles. But he said the United States also expressed concern about Chinese AI activities that threaten U.S. national security.
He said China has made AI development a “major” priority and is rapidly deploying capabilities in both the civilian and military sectors, often “that we believe undermine the national security of both the United States and our allies.” He said that
U.S. officials said the meeting was not aimed at promoting technical cooperation or cooperation in frontier research between the two countries.
“In addition to the national security risks, we believe there are also global risks posed by the rapid advances in AI that are worthy of exchange between the United States and China,” he added.
AI Conversations was one of several outcomes of the summit held in San Francisco in November. Under the agreement, the U.S. and Chinese militaries have resumed communications channels that China had suspended after then-Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022.
The United States and China have also established a task force to address the shipment of fentanyl raw materials from China to Mexico, where drug cartels use the chemical to manufacture deadly synthetic opioids.
Although the San Francisco agreement helped stabilize relations between the great powers, China’s aggressive military activities around Taiwan and the Philippines and U.S. efforts to prevent Chinese groups from acquiring advanced U.S. technology such as chips Tensions remain high over a variety of issues. For machine tools needed to build powerful chips for AI and AI applications.
The United States is also expected to announce on Tuesday that it will quadruple its tariffs on electric vehicle imports from China. Last week, the U.S. Department of Commerce added dozens of Chinese business groups to its “enterprise list,” making it difficult for U.S. companies to export technology to those companies.