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Nuclear weapons and poison pills: Washington, Beijing warily circle AI talks

SCMP 13 Feb 24

• Bilateral dialogue on automated weapons and artificial intelligence is expected to take place this spring, with parameters yet to be established
• Both China and the US are wary of giving their adversary an advantage by limiting their own capability

The United States and China have a shared interest in sitting down to discuss automated weapons, artificial intelligence and its many potential and unforeseen abuses. Less clear is whether the two global AI superpowers and their huge militaries have common interests or goals coming into the talks, which are expected to take place this spring, according to analysts and experts involved in informal sessions between the two nations.

“The good news, which has been a really, really rare thing these days, is that the AI dialogue is seeing some hope,” said Xiaomeng Lu, director of with Eurasia Group’s geo-technology practice, who is involved with US-China “Track 2” talks among former government officials, experts and analysts. “Both sides have an interest in preventing unintended consequences.”

Washington and Beijing have agreed to sit down in the next few months and discuss AI issues, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in late January after meeting with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi in Thailand. Non-official Track 2 and semi-official Track 1.5 talks often act as a preamble to formal negotiations. The decision to establish a working group on AI was reached during the November summit between Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in northern California.

Beijing and Washington have both become increasingly uneasy about the effect that artificial intelligence could have on warfare, governance and society as the technology threatens to eclipse mankind’s ability to control or fully understand it, even as they are wary of giving their adversary an advantage by limiting their own capability.

Lu said both sides in the discussions she has participated in appear engaged and intent on defining what constitutes an autonomous weapon and what it means to have a human in the loop for weapons of mass destruction.

“I can sense the energy; we’re all trying to throw ideas at this,” she said. “The common threat to the US and China these days is what AI can unleash, let’s say nuclear weapons, like a nuclear missile. That’s a very dangerous threshold, and both sides have an interest in preventing unintended consequences.”

Less clear is how that would translate…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

So far, there’s no evidence of any army worldwide using or planning to use frontier AI models for military use, analysts said.

Separately, the world’s two largest economies – key to any meaningful global deal – are also circling around a framework for AI control in the commercial sphere, an issue former secretary of state Henry Kissinger raised last summer on a trip to Beijing four months before his death, reportedly in close consultation with former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt.

Track 2 talks in the commercial area have seen extremely limited progress, with the Chinese side arguing that the best way to ensure safety is for both sides to fully share their technology and halt export restrictions on key AI technologies.

“That’s a non-starter, a poison pill for the US,” said Lu.

This comes as Washington released a proposed rule in late January requiring cloud service providers such as Microsoft and Amazon to identify and actively investigate foreign clients developing AI applications on their platforms, seen as targeting China………………………………………………………….

Among the participants in recent AI Track 2 discussions were representatives from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, George Washington University, the Brookings Institution, several other US think tanks, Tsinghua University, and Chinese think tanks affiliated with the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Industry.

Both sides have very different core interests, and also are competing for third-country support for their global AI security blueprints……………………………………………………………………

now both sides are scrambling trying to figure out what it is they are going to talk about.”

Also weighing on the talks are very different views of transparency, decision-making and centralised authority. In the past with the advance of new technologies, from mobile phones and fax machines to the internet and cryptocurrency, Beijing has moved slowly to study and control their use and ensure they do not represent a threat to the Communist Party.

The US, with its more decentralised system, has more often allowed companies and individuals to explore and exploit their uses, regulating their use after problems and abuses surface………………………………………….

hinese companies, which are reluctant to engage in international meetings without more guidance from Beijing, even as it remains unclear who has authority over international engagement on AI within the government. Beijing sent Wu Zhaohui, a vice-minister of science and technology, to the UK AI Summit, but the lead regulator is the cyberspace administration of China, which does not have much of an international presence, complicating efforts to engage on AI outside China……………………………………………………….

The Xi-Biden summit represented a bid to stem the rapid slide in bilateral relations and lower the temperature. “AI safety is not a bad place to figure out, can we establish some kind of dialogue,” said Rasser, a former intelligence analyst. “There’s so much distrust on both sides that it’s a very steep hill to climb to some sort of agreement.

“But if at minimum they’re having discussions, dialogue is better than no dialogue. All in all, it’s not a bad thing that they’re exploring the potential.”  https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3251605/nuclear-weapons-and-poison-pills-washington-beijing-warily-circle-ai-talks

February 14, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology, weapons and war