‘Vicious competition serves no one’: China slams Anthropic CEO’s call to curb its AI
Beijing: China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday pushed back against a call from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for the US to curb China's artificial intelligence capabilities, as he argued for a global slowdown in AI development.
US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to discuss AI governance, among other issues, at a meeting planned for September 24.
China rejects ‘fearmongering’ over AI
Amodei, in a lengthy essay published on Saturday, warned that a “Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the United States and the world”.
He called for continued restrictions on sales of cutting-edge AI chips and chipmaking equipment to China to preserve the US lead in AI.
Responding to a question about the essay, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said all parties should work together on AI.
“Fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which serves no one’s interest,” Guo said at a regular press conference on Monday.
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Trump backs US lead in AI
On Sunday, Trump downplayed calls for his administration to slow AI development, saying the US was leading China in AI.
“Whoever wins AI, wins,” Trump said.
Amodei also warned that a swarm of AI “agents” could potentially take over the internet within six to 12 months unless researchers agree to slow down development.
He said achieving “global pacing” would require cooperation with China, which he described as the “autocratic country with by far the most advanced AI capabilities”.
China promotes global AI governance
Chinese companies have developed powerful AI models that are often cheaper to use than advanced models from US-based companies and, by some measures, are similarly capable.
Xi has called for a global AI governance framework involving the Global South while positioning China as a pioneer in building an open-source AI community.
China's Ministry of State Security has also called for “accelerating the establishment of a system for preventing and managing AI security risks” in a recent article.
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China accuses US of ‘containment’
China's state-run Global Times dismissed Amodei's essay in an editorial published Sunday, calling it a veiled attempt to “contain” China.
The editorial said the essay appeared to focus on global AI security but was “packed with containment provisions targeting China” and was, in essence, a “Cold War playbook” for the AI sector.
Amodei's essay came days after the FBI, National Security Agency and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a joint cybersecurity advisory alleging that Chinese AI developers had engaged in “aggressive, malicious” efforts to extract, or “distill”, capabilities from advanced US AI models, including Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's GPT.
China's Commerce Ministry dismissed the allegations as groundless, saying “distillation” is commonly used by many AI companies. It also accused the US of pursuing a “monopoly of the AI industry”.
US-China AI rivalry
Both China and the US want “to make sure the other side cannot establish a tech chokepoint over them”, said Lizzi C Lee, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis.
“So from Beijing's perspective, there is an obvious question: if the US wants China to cooperate on frontier safety while also restricting its access to frontier compute, what exactly does that cooperation look like?” Lee said.
AP