Latest news with #WorldArtificialIntelligenceConference
Business Recorder
19 minutes ago
- Business
- Business Recorder
China, Pakistan join hands to forge a shared future in AI era
From July 26 to 28, 2025, China successfully held the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance in Shanghai. Chinese Premier Li Qiang attended the opening ceremony and delivered an important speech. The conference released the Global AI Governance Action Plan, which outlines 13 concrete and actionable measures aimed at promoting AI development and application while ensuring safety, security, and controllability. The Plan emphasizes respect for national sovereignty, fairness, and inclusiveness, and calls for international cooperation and collaborative governance in AI. As the core driver of a new wave of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, AI is profoundly reshaping the global economic landscape and social structures. While AI presents unprecedented opportunities for development, it also brings tremendous risks and challenges. The Chinese government has always attached great importance to the healthy development and governance of AI. As early as 2023, President Xi Jinping of China proposed the Global AI Governance Initiative, charting a blueprint and providing guidance for global AI governance. The release of the Action Plan in Shanghai marks another significant contribution by China to global AI governance, establishing a comprehensive governance framework that spans philosophy, institutional mechanisms, and practical pathways. It not only addresses the current fragmentation in global AI governance but also offers China's wisdom in shaping a new paradigm for governance in the AI era. The six fundamental principles outlined in the Action Plan namely 'AI for good and in service of humanity, respect for national sovereignty, aligning with development goals, ensuring safety and controllability, upholding fairness and inclusiveness, and fostering open cooperation' reflect a fundamental shift from a technology-centric to a development-centric approach which aims at bridging the digital divide and fostering inclusive development, and aligns closely with the core aspirations of developing countries. I'm happy to note that our ironclad friend Pakistan has recently unveiled its National AI Policy 2025, which demonstrates remarkable consistency with China's Action Plan both in philosophy and practice, reflecting not only global trends in AI development but also the shared aspirations of developing countries in the digital age. Pakistan's AI policy is built on six pillars: fostering an innovation ecosystem, talent development, security governance, industrial transformation, infrastructure upgrading, and international cooperation, with a view to achieving 'digital sovereignty.' In terms of governance philosophy, Pakistan emphasizes ethical frameworks, data sovereignty, and transparent governance, resonating with China's principle of 'safety and controllability.' In infrastructure development, Pakistan plans to establish high-performance computing clusters and large language models, complementing the Chinese Action Plan's call to 'improve digital infrastructure layout and promote a unified computing power standard system.' In talent cultivation, China's proposal to strengthen international cooperation on AI capacity-building provides strong support for Pakistan's strategy to nurture AI professionals. It is particularly noteworthy that Pakistan focuses on applying AI in agriculture, healthcare, and climate resilience that highlight the shared people-centered development philosophy of both countries. Currently, China-Pakistan cooperation in AI has already yielded positive outcomes. The China-Pakistan AI Smart Agriculture Laboratory is leveraging AI technologies to help farmers in Faisalabad monitor crops and improve yields, while Chinese tech giant Huawei is assisting Pakistan in training 200,000 IT professionals, laying a solid foundation for bilateral AI collaboration. The Joint Statement between China and Pakistan specifically expresses our commitment to enhance cooperation on information technology and promote policy and talent exchanges in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, big data and communication technology. Looking ahead, China and Pakistan enjoy a bright prospect on AI cooperation. We stand ready to work with Pakistan to implement the consensus reached by our leaders. First is to strengthen policy coordination and standards alignment, and jointly explore AI governance models suited to each condition. Second is to advance technological research cooperation, particularly in applying AI to livelihood sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, and education. Third is to promote talent exchanges and capacity-building to cultivate professionals well-equipped for the intelligent era. Fourth is to deepen cooperation on data security and ethical governance, to ensure that AI development always progresses in the right direction. Moving forward, China plans to establish a World AI Cooperation Organization in further unleashing the dividends, bridging the AI divide, and ensuring AI for good, contributing wisdom and strength to a new international AI governance system. I am confident that, through the joint efforts of both sides, China-Pakistan AI cooperation will yield more fruitful outcomes, becoming a New Testament of building the upgraded version of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), particularly on the 'Innovation Corridor.' As all-weather strategic cooperative partners, China and Pakistan will continue to uphold openness, inclusiveness, and mutual benefits, jointly steering AI toward an open, inclusive, equitable, and beneficial future. This will not only create a better digital life for the people of both countries, but also contribute the wisdom and solutions of developing countries to global AI governance. Let us take AI cooperation as a new starting point, deepen innovation collaboration, share development opportunities, and compose a new chapter of China-Pakistan friendship to build a Community with a Shared Future for mankind. Together, we will generate more positive momentum into global peace and development and usher in a brighter future in the AI era. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Hindustan Times
China's Z.ai and America's Self-Defeating AI Strategy
China's DeepSeek shocked the global AI community in January by building a frontier model at a fraction of Western costs. Now it has been outdone by a Chinese company subject to U.S. sanctions. It has become painfully obvious that Washington's strategy of restricting chip exports isn't working. formerly Zhipu AI, last week launched GLM-4.5, a production-level open-source model priced at 13% of DeepSeek's cost. It matches or exceeds Western standards in coding, reasoning and tool use. runs on only eight Nvidia H20 chips, which Nvidia recently gained reapproval to sell in China. That's better performance than DeepSeek with about half the hardware. did it despite being under Washington's most restrictive GPU sanctions. The Commerce Department placed Zhipu and its subsidiaries on the U.S. Entity List in January for allegedly aiding China's military modernization. (Zhipu disputed the factual basis of Washington's decision.) About six months later—backed by $1.5 billion from Alibaba, Tencent and Chinese state funds— delivered one of the world's most competitive models. The company projects it will have millions of downloads and millions of dollars of revenue in 2025. The company isn't an outlier. It's a signal of how well China's AI strategy is working and how poorly America's attempts to halt Beijing have fared. Washington's tack so far has been to try to limit Chinese entities' access to advanced hardware. Critics warned that export controls wouldn't stop China from innovating and would instead push Chinese companies to develop their own chips, with which they could then fill the supply void left by the overly strict U.S. export rules. Far from controlling global chip demand, America was surrendering control to Beijing. That's exactly what seems to have happened. At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai last month, Premier Li Qiang, the second most powerful official in China, revealed a comprehensive AI plan. The country is taking a top-down approach that combines—on an international scale—GPU infrastructure diplomacy, open-source development and low-cost offerings on everything AI, from models and hardware to engineers. The new 'AI Plus' initiative aims to integrate Chinese models into key industries and export Chinese AI and hardware to the Global South—no export license, no questions asked. The results are already clear. China has racked up more than 1,500 models, many of which are open-source. Many outperform or match the math and coding benchmarks of Western models. Huawei's GPUs are quickly filling the gap left by the Biden administration's adoption of stricter export controls. The research firm Bernstein projects that Nvidia's global AI market share will drop a whopping 12% this year alone, if restrictions largely remain in place. China's foundry capacity has vastly surpassed Washington's expectation, and China is shipping chips abroad several years ahead of schedule. While U.S. politicians compete to see who can be more hawkish on China, Beijing is increasing international dependency on its models and hardware. What's the American response to a clearly failing strategy? In many parts of Washington, it's still restrictions. But happily that isn't true in the White House. The Trump administration's recently announced AI Action Plan emphasizes that U.S. strength lies in scaling supply and adoption abroad, not retreating. The president proposes exporting American AI and hardware while cutting regulations that slow production at home. Our data centers now consume more power than small cities. While China expands its energy production through whatever source is expedient, we face permitting delays and political scaremongering. America needs to streamline approvals, speed up reindustrialization, and rebuild large-scale computing capabilities. The U.S. should also make a priority of developing a Western AI supply chain with Latin America to counter China's AI Belt and Road Initiative. This would turn the strategic manufacturing diplomacy Beijing favors against China. Beijing is right to see exporting AI hardware and models as leverage. Each Nvidia chip sent abroad is a new point on the board for American software and values. Every U.S.-branded LLM shapes AI norms globally. Success comes from ubiquity of platforms, not exclusion or restrictions. Hesitation isn't the same as safety. America needs to start shipping AI to the world before it's too late, including to China. success proves that sanctions won't stop Beijing. The next great Chinese AI model will be faster, cheaper and maybe fully self-sufficient. For America to lead, it must boost exports, infrastructure and global influence. The AI future goes to the innovators who can establish a global platform, not to the most cautious regulators. Mr. Ginn is CEO and a co-founder of Hydra Host, a venture-backed AI data-center services and management company.
India Today
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- India Today
China enrols robot in theatre PhD, sparks debate on art and AI
The first for China, and possibly the world, a humanoid robot has been admitted to a PhD programme in Drama and Film. Named Xueba 01, the robot will pursue doctoral studies at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, focusing on traditional Chinese announcement was made during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on July jointly by the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology and DroidUp Robotics, Xueba 01 is designed to interact with humans both verbally and It speaks fluent Mandarin, stands at 1.75 metres tall, weighs 30 kilograms, and is built with silicone skin to mimic facial is a Chinese slang term used to describe a high-performing student. The name seems robot will train under Professor Yang Qingqing, a noted figure in Chinese performing arts. Its coursework includes stage performance, scriptwriting, set design, motion control, and language a rehearsal earlier this year, the robot replicated a famous hand gesture, called the 'orchid fingers', from Peking opera legend Mei Yang noted that human students in the room unconsciously mimicked the robot's movement. She described it as a form of 'aesthetic exchange,' not a human-vs-machine moment. Image: X While it's easy to focus on the machine's hardware or code, the Shanghai Theatre Academy seems more interested in what happens when technology enters a traditionally human space, live robot refers to itself as an 'AI artist' and has expressed a desire to collaborate with classmates, share script ideas, and even provide white noise for it completes the four-year programme, Xueba 01 could become a museum-based opera director, or even start an AI art the development hasn't gone on Chinese social media have raised concerns about priorities. They ask if funding this robotic student might take resources away from real human candidates, some of whom earn less than 3,000 yuan (US$420) question whether a machine, regardless of how refined, can grasp the emotional layers required in live the experiment has sparked widespread interest. Earlier, an older version of Xueba 01 completed a half-marathon in humanoid form and placed third. This step into the world of performance and storytelling, however, may be its boldest move many, the real story isn't about a robot earning a degree. It's about what happens when learning, art, and machines begin to share the same stage.- Ends
Arabian Post
6 days ago
- Business
- Arabian Post
China's AI Diplomacy in the Age of U.S. Unilateralism
Dr Imran Khalid On July 26, 2025, amid the grandeur of Shanghai's World Artificial Intelligence Conference and High-Level Meeting on AI Governance, China unveiled what may well become the defining moment in the transformation of global artificial intelligence – its AI Global Governance Action Plan and the bold proposal to create a World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, initially headquartered in Shanghai. These moves signal not just China's confidence, but its willingness to steer AI toward a future grounded in consultation, joint construction, and shared benefit, especially for countries of the Global South. As Premier Li Qiang delivered the opening address, he framed the current state of AI governance as 'fragmented,' with wide differences in regulatory approaches and institutional frameworks across nations. China's proposal to launch a centralized body reflects not hubris, but pragmatism: a conviction that to manage AI's accelerating capabilities responsibly, the world needs a broad consensus and unified standards, not a patchwork of regional rules. ADVERTISEMENT Premier Li's critique of 'technological monopolies' and a system in which AI becomes 'an exclusive game for a few countries and companies' extends a direct but tactful rebuke of unilateral AI dominance. China positions itself as the antidote, offering openness and inclusion rather than exclusion. Chinese-made AI systems are not theoretical constructs – they are delivering tangible benefits across the world. In Myanmar, Japan, and Brazil, Chinese AI is already contributing new momentum in agriculture, education, and cultural exchange. From precision farming techniques in Myanmar to AI-driven digital classrooms in Brazil and health‑monitoring systems in neighboring Japan, Chinese AI is showing that smart technology can uplift societies in practical, meaningful ways. While detailed reporting on these deployments remains limited in number of articles, it is widely reported that these partnerships align with China's Global Development Initiative and global South solidarity strategy, embedding Chinese AI not as a tool of influence, but as an enabler of local development. Parallel to its global outreach, China is doubling down on its domestic AI ecosystem. In response to escalating U.S. export controls on advanced Nvidia chipsets, local industry has mobilized: alliances like the Model‑Chip Ecosystem Innovation Alliance and Shanghai's AI Committee were formed to integrate chips, LLM developers, and industry partners including Huawei, Biren, Metax, SenseTime, and more. Huawei's unveiling of its CloudMatrix 384 system, with 384 proprietary 910C chips and milestone‑beating performance in key benchmarks, signals that China is rapidly closing the gap with, or in some metrics even overtaking, U.S. AI powerhouses. Tencent's Hunyuan3D World Model, Baidu's 'digital human' livestreaming avatars, and Alibaba's Quark AI Glasses further demonstrate the creative breadth and commercialization readiness of Chinese AI innovation. The newly proposed World AI Cooperation Organization is not just symbolic – it embodies China's 13‑point AI strategy, which emphasizes open‑source ecosystems, UN‑led dialogue channels, safety frameworks, and equitable access, especially for developing countries. ADVERTISEMENT China explicitly states that it is prepared to discuss arrangements with countries willing to join, inviting over 40 nations and organizations to participate in WAIC‑2025, including delegations from South Africa, Germany, Qatar, Russia, and South Korea. This indicates genuine openness, not coercion. By tentatively proposing Shanghai as headquarters, China is seeking to leverage the city's AI infrastructure and cosmopolitan character as an international hub for coordination and innovation, making the organization genuinely global in both form and function. To counter criticisms that Chinese AI lacks transparency or fosters censorship, Beijing has doubled down on open-source AI licensing models, with companies like DeepSeek and Alibaba releasing large language models for global use. This step has drawn both acclaim and concern – but it undeniably reflects an intent to democratize AI, not hoard it behind walls. At WAIC, Premier Li underscored China's desire to offer 'more Chinese solutions' and 'more Chinese wisdom' to the international community – words meant not to signal technological nationalism, but a global public good orientation. China continues to lead in deployment scale, from smart cities to digital education platforms, giving it a practical edge in shaping AI use cases worldwide. Unlike models centered on competition or coercion, China's emphasis on consultative multilateralism invites countries to participate rather than passively accept dictated rules. The proposed organization's focus on the Global South signals a willingness to ensure that AI development benefits those often left behind in digital transformation. And as Western nations use tech controls and export restrictions to limit Chinese advancement, China is answering with self-reliance and cooperation, not retreat or isolation. Of course, organizing a truly global AI governance body will require surmounting skepticism – about data privacy, algorithmic bias, political neutrality, and transparency. Critics warn that state-directed AI can embed internal ideology or censorship into exported models. The U.S. editorial press highlighted concerns about political alignment in Chinese models – even calling for caution in their deployment overseas. Yet China's willingness to open source key models and invite broad membership gives the proposed organization an advantage: accountability through participation, rather than distrust through exclusion. The test lies in execution: whether the organization remains inclusive and respects local governance norms or becomes a tool for geopolitical leverage. But China's current posture – promoting broad participation, offering development cooperation, and pushing for open‑source access – marks a meaningful departure from tech monopolism and signals a constructive path forward. At a crossroads between fragmented regulatory silos and a competitive rush toward monopolistic dominance, the global community needs a bridge. China's AI Global Governance Action Plan and its proposed World AI Cooperation Organization offer precisely that: a new global architecture grounded in consultation, shared values, and equitable access. The question now is whether other nations will rise to the moment, engage in building a governance framework that truly reflects global consensus, and deliver AI development that benefits not just a handful of powerful economies, but humanity as a whole. If realized in good faith and with transparency, China has the opportunity to redefine global AI governance – not as a race for dominance, but as a cooperative journey toward shared prosperity. What Beijing has laid out in Shanghai is not just policy – it is an invitation. The world will decide whether to join. Also published on Medium. Notice an issue? Arabian Post strives to deliver the most accurate and reliable information to its readers. If you believe you have identified an error or inconsistency in this article, please don't hesitate to contact our editorial team at editor[at]thearabianpost[dot]com. We are committed to promptly addressing any concerns and ensuring the highest level of journalistic integrity.
Mint
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Mint
AI tracker: Passive listening is giving a boost to AI music
The rise of AI-generated music is reshaping the industry, with AI bands amassing millions of streams. As passive listening becomes the norm, human musicians face an uncertain future in a world where creativity is increasingly algorithm-driven. A rising tide of artificial intelligence (AI) bands is ushering in a new era where work will be scarcer for musicians, reported AFP. Whether it's Velvet Sundown's 1970s-style rock or country music projects 'Aventhis' and 'The Devil Inside,' bands whose members are pure AI creations are seeing more than a million plays on streaming giant Spotify. No major streaming service clearly labels tracks that come entirely from AI, except France's Deezer. Meanwhile, the producers of these songs tend to be unreachable. Artistes see the rise of AI music as a sign of how generic and formulaic genres have become. AI highlights the chasm between music people listen to 'passively' while doing other things and 'active' listening in which fans care about what artists convey, said producer and composer Yung Spielburg. At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) held in Shanghai recently, more than 150 robots were showcased by China in what appears to be the country's largest and most advanced lineup to date. The robots could be seen serving craft beer, playing mahjong, stacking shelves, and boxing, AFP reported. Organizers said the forum involved more than 800 companies, showcasing over 3,000 products, with the most popular exhibits displaying human skills, even badly. At one booth, a robot played drums, half a beat out of time, to Queen's 'We Will Rock You', for instance. Microsoft announced a new experimental mode in its Microsoft Edge browser called Copilot Mode. Switched on (the user has to actively make the choice), 'you enable innovative AI features in Edge that enhance your browser,' said the company in a blog post, explaining the features you may experience: 'It doesn't just wait idly for you to click but anticipates what you might want to do next. It doesn't just give you endless tabs to sift through but works with you as a collaborator that makes sense of it all.'
