The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has warned of the risks posed by advances in artificial intelligence (AI) while calling for heightened national security measures.
A meeting headed by Chinese President and CPP General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平) on Tuesday urged “dedicated efforts to safeguard political security, and improve the security governance of Internet data and artificial intelligence,” Xinhua news agency said.
Xi called at the meeting for “staying keenly aware of the complicated and challenging circumstances facing national security.”
Photo: AP
China needs a “new pattern of development with a new security architecture,” Xinhua reported Xi as saying.
The statements from Beijing followed a warning on Tuesday by scientists and tech industry leaders in the US, including high-level executives at Microsoft and Google, about the perils that artificial intelligence poses to humankind.
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement said.
SUPPRESSION
China already dedicates vast resources to suppressing any perceived political threats to the CCP’s dominance, with spending on the police and security personnel exceeding that devoted to the military.
While it relentlessly censors in-person protests and online criticism, citizens have continued to express dissatisfaction with policies, most recently the draconian lockdown measures enacted to combat the spread of COVID-19.
China has been cracking down on its tech sector in an effort to reassert party control, but like other countries, it is scrambling to find ways to regulate the developing technology.
The most recent party meeting reinforced the need to “assess the potential risks, take precautions, safeguard the people’s interests and national security, and ensure the safety, reliability and ability to control AI,” the Beijing Youth Daily reported on Tuesday.
Worries about artificial intelligence systems outsmarting humans and slipping out of control have intensified with the rise of a new generation of highly capable AI chatbots such as ChatGPT.
Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist known as the godfather of artificial intelligence, were among the hundreds of leading figures who signed the statement on Tuesday that was posted on the Center for AI Safety’s Web site.
More than 1,000 researchers and technologists, including Elon Musk, who is visiting China, had signed a much longer letter earlier this year calling for a six-month pause on AI development.
The missive said that AI poses “profound risks to society and humanity,” and some involved in the topic have proposed a UN treaty to regulate the technology.
China warned as far back as 2018 of the need to regulate AI, but has nonetheless funded a vast expansion in the field as part of efforts to seize the high ground on cutting-edge technologies.
NO PROTECTION
A lack of privacy protections and strict party control over the legal system have also resulted in near-blanket usage of facial, voice and even walking-gait recognition technology to identify and detain those seen as threatening, such as political dissenters and religious minorities, especially Muslims.
Members of the Uighur and other mainly Muslim ethnic groups have been singled out for mass electronic monitoring, and more than 1 million people have been detained in prison-like political re-education camps that China calls deradicalization and job training centers.
AI’s risks are seen mainly in its ability to control robotic, self-governing weaponry, financial tools and computers governing power grids, health centers, transportation networks and other key infrastructure.
China’s unbridled enthusiasm for new technology and willingness to tinker with imported or stolen research, and to stifle inquiries into major events such as the COVID-19 outbreak, heighten concerns over its use of AI.
“China’s blithe attitude toward technological risk, the government’s reckless ambition, and Beijing’s crisis mismanagement are all on a collision course with the escalating dangers of AI,” technology and national security academics Bill Drexel and Hannah Kelley wrote in an article published this week in the journal Foreign Affairs.
NXP Semiconductors NV expects its first automotive-grade 5-nanometer chip built by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to become available for automakers within one-and-a-half years at the earliest, following demand for better computing performance and energy efficiency for connected vehicles, a company executive said yesterday. That would mean a significant upgrade from the 16-nanometer technology NXP adopted in its existing series of microprocessors. NXP chief technology executive Lars Reger made the remarks during a media briefing yesterday in Taipei. The latest updates came after NXP unveiled its plan to source 5-nanometer capacity from TSMC in 2021. This is Reger’s first trip to
EVADING US CONTROLS? ‘These surveillance chips are relatively easy to manufacture compared to smartphone processors,’ a source said about HiSilicon’s components A Huawei Technologies Co (華為) unit is shipping new Chinese-made chips for surveillance cameras in a fresh sign that the Chinese tech giant is finding ways around four years of US export controls, two sources briefed on the unit’s efforts said. The shipments to surveillance camera manufacturers from the company’s chip design unit, HiSilicon Technologies Co (海思半導體), started this year, said one of the sources and a third source familiar with the industry supply chain. One of the sources briefed on the unit said that at least some of the customers were Chinese. Huawei unveiled new smartphones in the past few weeks that
CENTRAL BANK: The consumer price index would grow while core CPI is set to move forward at a milder rate, the governor said, adding that the GDP forecast is down The central bank yesterday kept its policy rate unchanged for the second straight quarter, saying that a rate pause would help support the economy, as consumer prices have moderated and would return to the 2 percent target next year. “The board gave unanimous support to a policy hold, although some members voiced concern over lingering inflationary pressures and called for close monitoring,” central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) told a media briefing after its quarterly board meeting. The consumer price index (CPI) would grow 1.83 percent next year, while core CPI after stripping out volatile items would advance a milder 1.73 percent,
SLUMP: The electronics, machinery and traditional industries posted the largest decline in the past year; overall, sectors showed gains over the previous month Taiwan’s industrial production index decreased 10.53 percent year-on-year to 91.38 last month, falling for a 15th consecutive month on an annual basis, as weak global economic growth continued to weigh on end-market demand and investment momentum, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Saturday. The industrial production index gauges output in Taiwan’s four main industries: manufacturing, electricity and gas supply, water supply, and mining and quarrying. Last month’s decline was the smallest contraction since March when the index dropped 16.03 percent from a year earlier. On a monthly basis, the index rose 7.28 percent, marking a second straight month of improvement,
RSS