OCTOBER 7 — There is a tendency in contemporary geopolitics to assume that the United States and China must necessarily approach artificial intelligence from opposite directions.
Washington innovates, Beijing competes; one side accelerates and the other responds. Such a framework is becoming increasingly inadequate.
China has demonstrated that it understands one of the central dangers confronting humanity: artificial intelligence that becomes increasingly autonomous, militarised and ultimately difficult for human beings to control.
This matters enormously as the technological competition moves beyond generative and agentic AI towards what may eventually become super intelligence.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in late May, Major General Meng Xiangqing of China’s National Defense University issued an important warning. The militarisation of emerging technologies, including AI, he argued, was challenging traditional rules governing warfare and creating the danger that events could escape human control.
