Top US and Chinese officials begin talks on AI in Geneva

GENEVA — Top envoys from the US and China met in closed-door talks in Geneva on Tuesday to lay out their national approaches to the promises and dangers of emerging artificial intelligence technology.

The talks, which Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping agreed to launch in 2023, are aimed at kick-starting bilateral dialogue between the world’s two largest economies – and increasingly geopolitical rivals – on a rapidly developing technology that already has an impact on trade. lifestyle, culture, politics, national security and defense and much more.

U.S. technology experts say the meeting — led on the U.S. side by senior White House and State Department officials — could provide a glimpse into Beijing’s thinking about AI amid a generally secretive Chinese approach to technology.

Co-founder Jason Glassberg of Casaba Security in Redmond, Washington, an expert on new and emerging AI threats, has handicapped the meeting as an introduction that will likely yield few concrete results but get the two sides talking. .

“The most important thing right now is that both sides realize they have a lot to lose if AI is weaponized or abused,” Glassberg said in an email. “All parties involved are at equal risk. Right now, deepfakes are one of the biggest areas of risk, especially when it comes to use in disinformation campaigns.”

“This is as big a risk to the People’s Republic of China as it is to the US government,” he added, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

It was not immediately clear why the meeting was taking place in Geneva, although the internationally oriented Swiss city bills itself as a hub of diplomacy and UN and international institutions.

The Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union – a UN agency currently led by America’s Doreen Bodgan-Martin and previously headed by China’s Houlin Zhao – will host its annual ‘AI for Good’ conference in the city later this month .

The meeting is the first in the context of an intergovernmental dialogue on AI agreed at a multi-faceted meeting between Xi and Biden in San Francisco six months ago.

The U.S. government has attempted to place a number of guardrails around the technology while promoting its growth, looking for a possible boon to economic output and jobs.

Western experts have suggested that the Chinese government, meanwhile, has been eyeing AI applications in part because of its real or potential applications for military and surveillance activities under the ruling Communist Party.

U.S. officials suggested they would consider ways to limit the technology’s potential risks by making voluntary commitments with the industry’s leading companies and requiring safety testing of AI products.