TORONTO - As Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived at the White House on Thursday, no amount of diplomatic pageantry could hide the fact that China and the United States are competing in an arms race towards global artificial intelligence dominance.
Ahead of the meeting with Xi, U.S. President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to indicate once again that he’s opposed to any international framework that would put up safeguards around the development of artificial intelligence.
“Big day with President Xi of China. Super Intelligence will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is. That is China’s position also. Our guardrail is the DOJ!” he posted.
However, there are growing concerns being shared about the potential for catastrophic risks if safeguards are not put in place to protect humanity from an AI takeover.
The Godfather of AI, Canadian Geoffrey Hinton, says the concerns are far reaching.
“There’s a risk of bad actors abusing AI for things like cyber attacks or making biological weapons, some terrorists already have the capability of building biological weapons thanks to AI.”
Just this week, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed that an OpenAI autonomous agent “infiltrated” the countries health-care system, which is believed by experts to be a world first.
At a UN Security Council meeting in New York on Wednesday, Sam Altman CEO of OpenAI, conceded that regulations are needed.
“It doesn’t matter if people put the level of catastrophe at 10 per cent or 1 per cent or 12 per cent or 0.1 per cent. None of these levels are remotely acceptable,” said Altman.
The co-founder of Anthropic shared a similar concerning message with the UN Security Council. Dario Amodei called the rapid, unchecked pace of AI development “the most important global security issue facing the world today.”
Amodei also warning that without a slowdown in development, AI could be capable of leading a swarm of autonomous agents that could “take over the entire internet” within six to 12 months.
Earlier this month, Trump emphasized his belief that falling behind China in the AI race simply is not an option.
“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins. And we can put guardrails. We can do this and that. But I think you have a lot of very negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up,” Trump said.
The two countries are leading in AI, though which country is winning the race is less clear. Trump has openly shared his view that China is America’s main rival.
Hinton says regardless of the desire to build fast, AI leaders must also build with intention.
“Instead of just racing to make AI smarter and smarter, we should be racing to make it into a better kind of being. We’re creating beings for the first time, these things really understand what they’re saying, they really have intentions,” shares Hinton.
