Beijing [China], September 14 (ANI): China's state run Global Times has launched an all-out criticism of Anthropic CEO after he advocated for slowing the pace of AI development amidst fears of losing control.
Experts quoted in a Global Times editorial have called the suggestions put forth by Amodei as "inappropriate," "hostile," and "groundless." The experts said such claims were driven by commercial interests and competitive concerns, which risked turning AI safety into a geopolitical, zero-sum issue rather than addressing a global challenge that requires cooperation among major AI powers.
Global Times quoted Xiang Ligang, a veteran telecom and tech policy observer, as saying, "Amodei's proposals seek to portray China's legitimate development in AI as a threat and further fuel confrontation between China and the US in the field. Such rhetoric is inappropriate, groundless, and hostile.
"On one hand, Amodei acknowledges that global efforts to pace AI development would ultimately require cooperation with China; on the other hand, he advocates restrictions on chips, computing power, and models to slow China's AI development, while explicitly seeking to widen the US technological lead over China," Ligang was quoted as saying.
Liu Shaoshan, director of Embodied AI at the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society, told Global Times that the issue has gone beyond AI safety, as it puts AI safety, national security, industrial competition, and commercial interests into the same framework.
"Once AI is portrayed as a technology that will determine national competition, national security, and even the future of civilization, an AI company is no longer seen as an ordinary tech company, but as 'strategic infrastructure.' This directly increases its policy importance, raises industry barriers, and boosts its valuation," Liu noted.
"The China threat narrative by certain US AI industry insiders serves a dual purpose here: on one hand, it serves US geopolitical competition; on the other, it amplifies the strategic value of some frontier AI companies and the rationale behind their valuations," he added.
Global Times says that China's growing open-source AI ecosystem is creating new opportunities for global innovation and cooperation. The country's open-source large models have now recorded more than 10 billion cumulative downloads, continuing to open up greater opportunities for global AI innovation and cooperation, it reported.
At the BRICS Summit in New Delhi, Chinese President Xi Jinping underlined the importance of cooperation on emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, calling for a people-centred approach and a global AI governance framework based on consensus.
The Chinese President proposed five initiatives aimed at deepening BRICS cooperation in areas including AI, trade and investment, digital industries, intelligent manufacturing and science and technology talent development.
Under the AI initiative, China proposed establishing a BRICS AI open-source community, while it also proposed a BRICS digital ecosystem cloud platform and greater cooperation in digital skills and technology.
Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Amodei advocated slowing down the pace of AI model development saying that if unchecked this could outrun human ability to control such systems.
"We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models...My first concern is that, since roughly this summer, AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI. This dynamic is called recursive self-improvement, and it is starting to happen across the industry, including at Anthropic, as we and others have described. Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at al," he wrote in a detailed essay.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella and Google's Demis Hassabis have also backed the suggestions made by Altman advocating that advanced artificial intelligence systems must remain strictly under human supervision while creators pursue measured progress to guarantee safety.
The flurry in the artificial intelligence sector follows an announcement by Jacob Coxon, a researcher associated with Anthropic, who publicly declared he was quitting the industry over fears that the company and its competitors were racing to build systems they would be unable to control. (ANI)
Chinese Media dubs Dario Amodei's call to slowdown AI development as 'hostile' and 'groundless'
