Fears of an AI breakthrough force the U.S. and China to talk

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

CHONGQING, China — Three years ago, in the idyllic town of Woodside south of San Francisco, the United States and China held their first high-level talks on the dangers posed by artificial intelligence.President Xi Jinping and his longtime foreign minister appeared serious in their conviction that a channel should be a established between Beijing and Washington — a red phone for AI in case of emergencies.They authorized a diplomatic effort that would begin in 2024 in Switzerland, only months before the U.S.

presidential election.A large U.S.

delegation arrived with high hopes that were abruptly dashed, according to four sources who attended the talks.The Chinese contingent dismissed American concerns over runaway AI as academic, almost theoretical, quickly turning the conversation to export controls seen in Beijing as yet another U.S.

effort to hold China back.“They naturally view any American diplomatic initiative involving limitations or restrictions of one flavor or another on a capability as being a trap,” Jake Sullivan, U.S.national security advisor under President Biden, said in an interview.Despite the distrust — and Democrats losing the White House to Donald Trump — an accord was struck in November of that year in Peru, where both sides agreed to keep AI out of the command and control of nuclear weapons.“It was a breaking of the seal that we could actually do something on AI,” Sullivan said.

“In the transition, I told the incoming Trump team that they should really pick up that dialogue.But the Trump administration’s view was just far more laissez-faire, and they didn’t seem particularly interested in it.”“That’s all changed in the past few weeks,” he added.A real strike on civilization as we know it occurred in Silicon Valley, where a new AI super-brain was locked up because it’s too powerful — and unpredictable.A Trump administrat...