Secret talks among US companies and Chinese experts on AI safety

Some big US AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Cohere met up secretly with Chinese government AI experts in Geneva last year to chat about keeping AI safe and avoiding harms. This rare team-up comes while the US and China are competing hard in cutting-edge tech like AI.

What’s going on here?

Some US and Chinese stakeholders put aside their tech race to quietly work together on AI safety.

What does this mean?

These previously secret meetings in July and October 2022 were among American AI leaders and big Chinese institutions like Tsinghua University. Their goal was to find common ground on AI safety and standards to ensure AI develops in a safe, ethical way.

White House, UK and Chinese government officials knew about the organization of these Geneva meetings. Shaikh Group which helps with talks in regions of conflict mediated these talks. Chinese AI companies like ByteDance, Tencent, Baidu, and Google DeepMind didn't participate, although DeepMind was briefed.

Why should I care?

Keeping aside the future innovations, AI as we have it now is going to impact geopolitics and international narratives massively. Among that, it’s nice to have key stakeholders discuss how they can deal with this stuff and maybe, not blow it all up.