hinese President Xi Jinping’s special representative Zhang Guoqing, also a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and a vice premier of the State Council, attended the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit hosted by France from February 9 to 12.
The summit focused on five key themes: public interest AI, future of work, innovation and culture, trust in AI, and global AI governance. Participants agreed that as AI becomes increasingly integrated into daily life, there is an urgent need to find a solution that balances AI governance with its development, Xinhua News Agency reported.
The AI technology race reached a new peak at the end of 2024 when DeepSeek, a tech company based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, launched open-source models DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1.
Media said that DeepSeek-R1 is on par with OpenAI o1 in performance, while its cost was only one-thirtieth.
On January 28, DeepSeek released another open-source model, JanusPro that can receive multiple types of data. The same day, downloads of DeepSeek in Apple’s North American App Stores had exceeded those of ChatGPT.
On February 17, Elon Musk’s X AI released chat robot Grok 3, claiming it is the smartest AI in the world.
According to new data from the China Game Industry Research Institute & Gamma Data, a Chinese analyst of game and digital industries, global AI industries received total financing of more than 400 billion yuan (US$57.1b) in 2024, growth of 77 percent year-on-year, with the US on top followed by China.
Experts, however, have warned against the safety of AI technologies and their negative impact on social development, such as unemployment, with no clear solutions yet.
At the France AI Summit, French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated the need for global AI regulations to ensure AI security, and Remi Bourgeot, associate research fellow at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS), said that global powers are focused more on the technological race than on regulatory frameworks. “Most governments are facing similar challenges with the risks posed by powerful AI models, so coordination will likely take place once AI reaches a more mature phase,” he said.
Chinese representative Zhang Guoqing, according to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stressed that President Xi Jinping put forward the Global Initiative for AI Governance in 2023, which contributed China’s solution and wisdom to the major questions of our times, and that the international community should work together to advocate the principle of AI for good, deepen cooperation on innovation, strengthen the inclusive development of AI for the benefit of all, improve global governance and jointly build a community with a shared future for mankind.
At the conclusion of the summit, 60 countries and international organizations, including China, signed the Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet.
The statement emphasizes the importance of increasing the diversity of AI ecology and affirms several priorities, including narrowing the digital divide in AI, improving AI’s openness, inclusiveness, transparency, morality, security and reliability, and increasing coordinated international governance.
The statement stressed that each signatory agrees that it is necessary to hold inclusive talks and ensure cooperation among interested parties.
The US and UK, however, refused to sign, arguing that excessive regulation could stifle a transformative sector just as it is beginning to flourish.
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