Latest news with #GlobalAIGovernanceInitiative
South China Morning Post
21-05-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong firms must take initiative on safe AI practices
As artificial intelligence (AI) develops rapidly, an increasing number of organisations are leveraging this technology to streamline operations, improve quality and enhance competitiveness. However, AI poses security risks, including personal data privacy risks, that cannot be ignored. For instance, organisations developing or using AI systems often collect, use and process personal data, posing privacy risks such as excessive collection, unauthorised use and breaches of personal data. The importance of AI security has become a common theme in international declarations and resolutions adopted in recent years. In 2023, 28 countries, including China and the United States, signed the Bletchley Declaration at the AI Safety Summit in the UK. The declaration stated that misuse of advanced AI models could lead to catastrophic harm and emphasised the urgent need to address these risks. In 2024, the United Nations General Assembly adopted an international resolution on AI , promoting 'safe, secure and trustworthy' AI systems. At the AI Action Summit in Paris in February, more than 60 countries, including China, signed a statement emphasising that leveraging the benefits of AI for economic and societal growth depends on advancing AI safety and trust. Concerning technological and industrial innovation, China has emphasised both development and security. In 2023, the Chinese mainland launched the Global AI Governance Initiative , proposing principles such as taking a people-centred approach and developing AI for good.
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
China ready to take control as US and UK back out of AI Action Summit statement
China could fill a leadership vacuum left by the United States and Britain after they refused to sign a global joint declaration on "inclusive and sustainable" artificial intelligence (AI) at a recent Paris summit, analysts have said. Meanwhile, they added, countries in the Global South are unlikely to take sides in any AI rivalry between China and the US. Signed by more than 60 countries, including China, the statement of the AI Action Summit sought to establish some safeguards for the rapidly evolving technology, pledging to ensure AI is "open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy". Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team. Both the US and the UK declined to sign the document, with the UK government saying "national security and global governance concerns" prevented the nation from accepting the communique. The US did not officially explain its decision, but in his speech to the summit, Vice-President J.D. Vance criticised excessive regulations, saying they could "kill a transformative industry". Madeline Carr, a global politics and cybersecurity professor from University College London, pointed out that the UK, host of the first ever AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park in 2023, had prioritised its alliance with the US in this move. "As the US seemed to have no intention of signing, the UK perhaps saw little option to do so either," she said. "The value of the US alliance to the UK has always been significant." But the US is also playing "a risky game" by not signing the document, as it leaves space for other actors to take the helm of global thought leadership and governance discussions. "Leaving the playing field on AI is most likely a mistake because others will fill that gap with their own vision, leadership and technology," she said. "And that combination of powerful factors will serve the best interests of some other state - most likely China - instead of the US." Kenddrick Chan, head of the digital international relations project at foreign policy think-tank LSE IDEAS, said the summit highlighted "growing divisions in global AI governance". "Over the past two years or so, we have started to see multiple competing AI governance models and what happened at the Paris AI summit signals a continuation of that trend." China, one of the signatories, reiterated its commitment to advancing international collaboration in AI development. In October, Beijing released the Global AI Governance Initiative and called for "equal rights" on development, regardless of a country's political system. Former Chinese vice-minister for foreign affairs Fu Ying also called for AI global governance to "transcend geopolitical interference" at the summit. "The current US technological blockade and suppression against China have poisoned the atmosphere of global cooperation," Fu said. Amid the growing China-US rivalry in AI, developing countries are ramping up various AI initiatives and adopting the technology across different sectors, as the rise of innovations such as DeepSeek fuels optimism. Bitange Ndemo, Kenya's ambassador to Belgium, said English has dominated the space of innovation for a long time, and the appearance of DeepSeek has inspired local scientists. "It gives us hope that we can take our languages and be able to develop our own language models," he said. Chan noted that most African governments see AI as a tool to "leapfrog" national development and spur economic growth. "[African countries] can focus on adapting and fine-tuning DeepSeek-R1 to suit local needs ... accelerating AI adoption across diverse sectors," he said. "The agriculture, healthcare and education sectors are verticals in which AI-driven solutions can have transformative impact." In January, Nigeria unveiled an AI-powered tool designed to enhance public service efficiency. Earlier this month, an innovative AI chatbot called FarmerAI was developed in Kenya, aimed at providing smallholders in underserved communities with real-time, relevant information on farming best practices. These ambitions are underpinned by Chinese-built infrastructure. Firms such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE have played a key role in building Africa's digital infrastructure, deploying submarine and terrestrial cables, expanding 5G networks, and establishing data centres, said Yu Jia, senior operations officer of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University. "Thereby [they laid] the critical hardware foundation for AI development and adoption across the continent," Yu said. Last September, Chinese President Xi Jinping committed nearly 360 billion yuan (US$50 billion) over the next three years for debt-stricken Africa. This funding will focus on expanding infrastructure projects. Yet Africa's embracing of Chinese investment and technology has yet to translate into geopolitical alignment. As US-China tensions escalate over AI dominance, African leaders are doubling down on neutrality. "African countries generally wish to avoid picking sides and are more eager to work with external powers to provide complementary resources," Yu said, adding that the US primarily influences the setting of technological standards through the operations of multinational corporations in Africa. "The interaction between China and the United States in Africa's AI sector is more about differentiated competition than a zero-sum game." This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
