Trump and Xi to discuss AI crisis hotline at APEC as concerns grow over rogue models

Detailed summary

TOKYO: Artificial intelligence (AI) bots going rogue and people using the technology to cause harm are likely to be on the agenda when Donald Trump and Xi ...

TOKYO: Artificial intelligence (AI) bots going rogue and people using the technology to cause harm are likely to be on the agenda when Donald Trump and Xi Jinping meet next week, with the Nvidia scandal hanging over the talks on AI safety.

The US and Chinese presidents are set to discuss a tech crisis hotline at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, as experts around the world stress-test AI models to see whether they will deceive or disobey users, or reveal how to build a bioweapon.

Threatening to overshadow the meeting is Jensen Huang’s resignation as head of US AI chip giant Nvidia, following reports of an affair with a woman accused of spying for China.

But the scandal is unlikely to “dominate the agenda” or affect Trump and Xi’s personal relationship, said Dylan Loh of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

The two leaders have found a way to work together “where they differ, compete and pursue their goals that may be at odds with each other, but cooperate where they can and where they must”, Loh told AFP.

Fears over the risks of AI have mostly stemmed from incidents at US labs, but there is growing evidence of worrying behavior by Chinese models too.

Some insiders say Chinese AI is not yet advanced enough to raise alarm over going rogue. But despite trailing the US frontier, some Chinese models are “at the level of capability that they can cause some real trouble”, Brookings Institution fellow Kyle Chan told AFP.

Trump has repeatedly rejected calls to deliberately slow the development of America’s most powerful, and potentially dangerous, AI systems, arguing it could help China get ahead.

“I don’t mind guardrails. But I don’t wanna put us in a deep second position,” Trump told CBS News this month. “China has no guardrails,” he said, except that “whatever President Xi says goes”.

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