China hits back at Anthropic’s call to restrict its AI, warns against ‘fearmongering, vicious competition’
China’s ministry of foreign affairs on Monday criticised a call by Anthropic’s chief for the United States to curb China’s artificial intelligence capabilities, as he pushed for a global slowdown in the development of AI.Anthropic CEO Dario 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 the sale of cutting-edge AI chips and chipmaking equipment to China to maintain the United States’ lead in artificial intelligence.Responding to a question about Amodei’s essay, foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said all parties should work together to advance artificial intelligence.“Fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which serves no one’s interest,” Jiakun said, as cited by AP.China’s state-run Global Times newspaper dismissed Amodei’s essay as a veiled call to “contain” China. It said the essay may appear on the surface to focus on global AI security, but is “packed with containment provisions targeting China and is, in essence, a ‘Cold War playbook’ for the AI sector.”China’s commerce ministry dismissed the US claims as groundless, saying “distillation” is a technique commonly used by many AI companies. It also accused the United States of pursuing a “monopoly of the AI industry.”
Trump-Xi likely to discuss AI governance
Meanwhile, US president Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping are expected to discuss AI governance, among other issues, at a meeting scheduled for September 24.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 equally capable.Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for the establishment of a global AI governance framework among Global South countries, while positioning China as a pioneer in building an open-source AI community.The head of China’s Ministry of State Security has also called for “accelerating the establishment of a system for preventing and managing AI security risks”.
