China's government on Monday responded to requests from several senior executives of leading US artificial intelligence companies to slow the pace of development of the technology, calling it a form of fear-mongering and part of a "Cold War-era strategy."
According to ITNA quoting CNBC, the response came after a lengthy essay by Daniel (Dario) Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, published on Saturday, which was endorsed by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX.
In the essay, Amodei had called for companies active in the field, including his own, to deliberately slow the improvement of AI models, arguing that too rapid progress could be dangerous.
Guo Jia-kun, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a Monday press conference that promoting fear, stoking competition and hostile behavior only disrupts the global governance process for AI and benefits no one.
The state-run Global Times on Sunday, in a harsher tone, accused the call to slow the development of the AI industry of having strands of containing China and described it as a version of a "Cold War-era strategy" for the industry.
In line with this, Chen Yixin, China's minister of state security, emphasized in an article on Sunday the need to accelerate the construction of a system for preventing and controlling AI security risks, describing the field as the main arena of global technological competition and a new theater for strategic competition among major powers.
Trump's reaction and the stock market drop
Donald Trump, President of the United States, also rejected these warnings during his trip to Ireland and said that the US currently leads China in AI and does not intend to cede that position, because whichever country wins this competition will effectively win at everything.
After Amodei's essay and the public support of Altman and Musk, AI-related stocks fell noticeably on Monday. SoftBank shares, one of the largest investors in OpenAI, fell nearly 10 percent in Japan's market, and South Korea's KOSPI index closed down more than 3 percent, largely due to declines in shares of chipmaker SK Hynix.
In the US, Nasdaq futures fell about 1.8 percent, driven by declines in chipmakers such as Nvidia and Intel.
How large is China's real gap with the US in AI?
Helen Toner, executive director of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University and a former member of OpenAI's board, told CNBC that based on the best available estimates, the best Chinese models are about six to nine months behind the most advanced American models.
She warned that if the US slows down while China is not far behind, this could become a serious problem for Washington; however, she noted that it is still unclear how much of China's progress is simply rapid follow-on from American achievements.
According to the report, adoption of Chinese AI models by Western companies is also increasing as the capabilities of these models improve.