China agreed to work with the United States, European Union and other countries to collectively manage the risk from artificial intelligence at a British summit on Wednesday aimed at charting a safe way forward for the rapidly evolving technology.
In a first for Western efforts to manage its safe development, a Chinese vice minister joined U.S. and EU leaders and tech bosses such as Elon Musk and ChatGPT’s Sam Altman at Bletchley Park, home of Britain’s World War Two code-breakers.
More than 25 countries present, including the United States and China, as well as the EU, signed a “Bletchley Declaration” saying countries needed to work together and establish a common approach on oversight.
The declaration set out a two-pronged agenda focused on identifying risks of shared concern and building scientific understanding of them, while also developing cross-country policies to mitigate them.
Wu Zhaohui, China’s vice minister of science and technology, told the opening session of the two-day summit that Beijing was ready to increase collaboration on AI safety to help build an international “governance framework”.
“Countries regardless of their size and scale have equal rights to develop and use AI,” he said.
Fears about the impact AI could have on economies and society took off in November last year when Microsoft-backed (MSFT.O) OpenAI made ChatGPT available to the public.
