China dismisses AI slowdown calls and blasts ‘fearmongering’ from U.S. tech leaders

HONG KONG — China has dismissed urgent calls to slow down the development of AI, rejecting the grave warnings as a bid to hobble the progress of America’s rival superpower rather than safeguard humanity’s future.

Beijing on Monday dismissed the intervention from U.S. tech leaders as “fearmongering” and part of a “Cold War playbook.”

It’s the latest sign that competition between the two countries could outweigh mounting safety concerns, after President Donald Trump also rebuffed the warnings from industry leaders and said his focus was on beating China on artificial intelligence.

The comments followed a lengthy essay published Saturday by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and endorsed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Amodei said that companies should deliberately “slow the pace” at which they improve their models given the potential risks. He also said that a “Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the United States and the world,” and called for the U.S. to restrict sales of key tech to China.

That message was not welcomed by Beijing.

“Fearmongering, confrontation and malicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance and serve no one’s interests,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business