AI Armageddon looks different from China
If Beijing wants to lead the world in the technology, it must be willing to work with other nations on the threats both sides can at least agree on.
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The latest safety rallying cry in the US is the incredibly hollow phrase “pace the frontier”, a jargony proposal from Anthropic’s Dario Amodei (left) that garnered a rare agreement from OpenAI’s Sam Altman (right) and xAI’s Elon Musk.
PHOTOS: REUTERS, AFP
Catherine Thorbecke
Rather than rogue artificial intelligence agents supposedly killing us all, Beijing has a more immediate nightmare: That the technology could help humans tear society apart first.
After Silicon Valley spent the past week ramping up fears of AI destroying humanity, China rebuffed what it sees as “fearmongering”. Minister of State Security Chen Yixin separately penned an essay on Sept 13 offering a glimpse into some of the nation’s biggest fears. It doesn’t mention human extinction. The top concern is how the technology could ruin social stability via deepfakes, influence operations, and cognitive warfare at scale. Second was cyberthreats that could make it much easier to harvest sensitive and personal information.