US President Biden to divert AI funding away from China
The Chinese government has displayed outrage and dissatisfaction at US President Biden ’s administration who by many accounts are devising an executive order aimed at keeping technological investments such as AI, quantum computing and semiconductors out of China.
In a plan President Biden intends to launch in mid-May at the G7 meeting Japan, the US is planning to maintain and secure their competitive edge in technological development particularly against its biggest rival in China.
Naturally China has responded with great disdain for this impending plan. A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs made this statement in a briefing subsequent to coming to know of this plan.
“The true intention of the U.S. is to take away the right to development from China and maintain U.S. supremacy for its selfish interests”
He also claimed this was a blatant act of economic coercion and dubbed it sci-tech bullying. Marking it as against both the principles of market economy and fair competition, going so far as to claim it will disrupt the international economic ecosystem and “hurts the interests of the whole world”.
In this statement he also issued a warning that China would safeguard their rights and interests but did not outline a course of action to instigate this threat.
The White House has declined when questioned on President Biden ‘s intent, to respond to the accusatory tone of the Chinese government.
This news comes in lieu of new draft measures released by the Chinese government regarding the regulation of generative AI and the industry developing it. Becoming one of the seminal nation’s to make moves to regulate AI and confirming their stance towards this highly influential and controversial technology.
This new legislation proposes the implementation of China’s notorious “socialist core values” outlining technical, economic, social and political risk factors.
The draft states that generative AI’s transparency and interpretability can be limited and bias may be a possibility. In economic terms it has already affected employment, profit distribution and poses a big threat to a competitive market, potentially a component of a monopoly.
Using this analysis involving these factors, China wishes to perpetually shape and mould the development of AI into the near and long-term future. The world’s most popular nature has been accelerating the development and integration of AI since 2018 when the Chinese President Xi Jingping declared the strategic importance of it in 2018.
However, these constraints will most certainly be a hindrance as opposed to the balanced control of development it was intended to be given the US’s proposed executive order. The AI industry in China is already of mammoth proportions and expected to triple to the tune of 400 billion yuan (US$58 billion) by 2025, most importantly putting them on level terms with the United States.
The US and President Biden are in all likelihood aware that this sector within mainland China requires an exorbitant amount of resources and funding, which it is only barely fulfilling as it is. The pulling of any significant amount would cause monumental mitigation of success.
This is the cause of China’s frustration only fuelling the many fractious issues plaguing the relationship between China and the US. However, relying on one’s biggest rival for growth, though pragmatic, is perhaps not the most prudent of strategies and may stand to improve relations with the removal of conflicting interests when it comes time to negotiate over other matters such as the impending situation in Taiwan.
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