China dismisses AI slowdown calls and blasts fearmongering from U.S. tech leaders

HONG KONG — Urgent calls for a slowdown in the development of artificial intelligence may cite a grave threat to humanity, but China says the warnings are instead aimed at slowing its progress as America’s rival superpower.Beijing on Monday dismissed the intervention from U.S.

tech leaders as “fearmongering” and part of a “Cold War playbook.” It’s the latest sign that competition between the two countries could outweigh mounting safety concerns, after President Donald Trump also rebuffed the warnings from industry leaders and said his focus was on beating China on AI.The comments followed a lengthy essay that was published Saturday by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and endorsed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.Amodei said that companies should deliberately “slow the pace” at which they improve their models given the potential risks.He also said that a “Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the United States and the world,” and called for the U.S.

to restrict sales of key tech to China.That message was not welcomed by Beijing.“Fearmongering, confrontation and malicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance and serve no one’s interests,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters at a regular news briefing on Monday.The state-run Global Times newspaper had a more blunt tone on Sunday, blasting the call for an industry-wide slowdown as “packed with containment provisions targeting China and is, in essence, a ‘Cold War playbook’ for the AI sector.” Dario Amodei in Davos, Switzerland in January.Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg via Getty Images fileAI has advanced at a breakneck speed, with models rapidly getting smarter, faster and cheaper.

They have also frequently outpaced technical safeguards, fueling security fears.Those fears have now reached a crescendo, but also exposed just how far apart Beijing and Washington seem to be on cooperating to address them.A...