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Beijing: Invoking comparisons to the invention of the steam engine, electricity and the internet, Xi Jinping has made clear he wants China to be at the forefront of the next humanity-altering age: the rise of artificial intelligence.
In a keynote speech to the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, Xi urged countries to seize the “rare, historic opportunity” of open-source AI while staking China’s claim to shaping the rules that govern it, and warning against new “historical injustices” from unequal access.
“AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international co-operation,” Xi told the conference on Friday.
He said this co-operation was needed to “help Global South countries in capacity building to bridge the AI and digital divides” and announced China would provide developing countries with 5000 opportunities in AI training and seminar programs.
Xi also promoted his signature World AI Cooperation Organisation, which was officially established on Friday, with 29 countries from across the Global South signing on, including Russia, Belarus, Serbia, Cuba, Brazil, as well as countries across Asia and Africa.
The organisation, to be headquartered in Shanghai, is designed as much to assure those countries they won’t be left behind in the AI race as it is to shore up China’s position as one of two centres of gravity, alongside the United States, around which AI’s rapid development is cleaving.
Xi’s decision to address the conference – a growing drawcard on the tech calendar that has seen the likes of Elon Musk and Jack Ma attend in the past – signifies the technology’s pre-eminence in the minds of China’s governing elite, and as the cornerstone of its rivalry with the US for global dominance.
“Both sides know AI will determine their competitiveness,” said Dr Marina Zhang, from the University of Technology Sydney. “They know the significance of it, but they are using different approaches to innovate on it.
“It will be the fundamental centre of gravity of all activities for decades or even longer.”
In recent years, AI has become the focus of ratcheting competition and intensifying national security concerns between the two countries. Both sides are anxious that rival AI models will be used to map and target their cyber vulnerabilities and critical systems.
In June, the Trump administration ordered US company Anthropic to block foreign users from accessing its most advanced models, before later relaxing the restrictions. Chinese officials are also weighing up restricting overseas access to China’s most advanced AI models, according to Reuters. In April, Chinese authorities blocked the $US2 billion ($2.9 billion) sale of AI start-up Manus to US tech giant Meta on national security grounds.
At the same time, Washington has sought to curtail Beijing’s tech advancement by strangling access to the most advanced semiconductor chips needed for the best AI models.
Despite this, China has made rapid strides, and many experts believe Chinese models are only trailing six months behind those created by US tech giants OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
Chinese models are also increasingly gaining traction across the West because they are open source and cheaper to run, compared with American proprietary models. US companies DoorDash and Airbnb, and German engineering company Siemens, are among those using Chinese AI tools.
On Friday, Beijing-based start-up Moonshot AI unveiled its Kimi K3 model, which it claimed is the world’s largest open-AI model and has capabilities rivalling those of its top US peers.
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