China wants to lead the world on AI regulation - will the plan work?

"Despite risks ranging from exacerbating inequality to causing existential catastrophe, the world has yet to agree on regulations to govern artificial intelligence. Although a patchwork of national and regional regulations exists, for many countries binding rules are still being fleshed out. In October, at a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated his country's proposal to create a body known as the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO)."

"The proposal is part of a wider drive to be at the helm of efforts to govern AI, in contrast to a US approach that is focused on deregulation. When it comes to transparency and AI policy, "China is the good guy at the moment," Wendy Hall, a computer scientist at the University of Southampton, UK, told reporters at an event in London in October."

"Encouraged by the government, Chinese firms tend to release models as open weight, meaning that they can be downloaded and built on. And compared with Western nations, China has less of a focus on making machines that could outsmart humans - often referred to as artificial general intelligence - and is instead concentrating on a race to use AI to drive economic growth."

Global regulation for artificial intelligence remains unresolved despite risks from inequality to existential catastrophe. National and regional rules form a patchwork while many countries still define binding regulations. China proposed a World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) to coordinate nations toward global AI governance. China seeks leadership in AI governance contrasting with a US emphasis on deregulation. Some experts view China as favorable on transparency. Creating an intergovernmental binding AI agreement faces many hurdles but advocates compare potential accords to existing regimes for nuclear power and aviation. Chinese AI ecosystem emphasizes open-weight model releases and economic-growth applications over artificial general intelligence.

Read at Nature