Cooperation Leaders' week in Woodside, California on November 15, 2023. Biden and Xi will try to prevent the superpowers' rivalry spilling into conflict when they meet for the first time in a year at a high-stakes summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. “strengthening the global governance of artificial intelligence” and advocated for expanding the role of the United Nations. The subtext: China doesn’t want the United States to have unchallenged control over global AI safety standards.
The major point of agreement the two sides came to at the AI safety summit is that AI should be safe. In other words, substantive outcomes were sparse.
Advocating for global inclusion on AI safety helps Beijing make the case that U.S. restrictions targeting China’s access to advanced chips needed to run AI systems are unfair. It also creates room for a coalition of countries in opposition to the status quo set by the United States to emerge. China sees itself leading that coalition.
Plus, it increasingly appears that which superpower leads in international AI governance is more a matter of power distribution than substantial differences in approach. According to Concordia AI’s State of AI Safety in China 2024, China’s recent diplomatic engagement on AI governance “indicates a growing convergence of views on AI safety among major powers.