On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Laura Coates Live,” Washington Post Intelligence Lead Global Security Analyst Josh Rogin said that “U.S. goals in AI and Chinese goals in AI are irreconcilable” and China “does not want to cooperate with us on AI” although it isn’t true that regulating AI will automatically cause us to lose to China.
Rogin said, “Xi Jinping has been very public about his views on AI. So, we know what they are. And he’s not about to slow down, alright. He sees that China and the U.S. are in a race for AI and that the U.S. is ahead. So, he thinks that — and this is how the Chinese government thinks, that, if we’re calling for a slowdown, that’s because we want to cement our lead against them. So they’re not going to slow down. At the same time, this idea that if we regulate AI, that China will win, is not true. And the way that we know that is because China regulates AI. They have the most regulation of their AI than any country in the world, and they’re moving very, very fast. They’re almost at where we are or maybe going to beat us, and they have a ton of regulation. So, the tech bros in the U.S. that say, if we regulate AI, the Chinese are going to win, that’s a self-serving argument that isn’t true. But at the same time, we have to understand that Chinese regulation of AI is meant to protect the Chinese Communist Party. When we talk about regulation of AI, we’re talking about protecting our privacy, our citizens, our data, our democracy. They don’t care about that in China. They don’t have that.”
He added, “There’s a middle ground, where we regulate AI and still win the race. That’s what we have to try to figure out, in my opinion.”
Guest host Boris Sanchez then asked, “So, when it comes to this meeting between Xi and Trump and this discussion of AI, is there a place where we could see what we saw during the Cold War, an agreement between two competing powers that say this thing, this new technology could wipe us all out, so we should maybe have some reasonable guardrails? Is that possible without something going catastrophically wrong and then an agreement coming in response, can they preempt disaster?”
Rogin answered, “Yeah, it’s a nice idea. I wouldn’t hold your breath. So, Xi Jinping is going to come to Washington. He’s going to have a state dinner. All these tech bros and Sam Altman, they’re all going to attend the state dinner. They’re going to try to say, shouldn’t we all work together? Wouldn’t it be nice? Kumbaya. But the bottom line is that U.S. goals in AI and Chinese goals in AI are irreconcilable, okay. And the Chinese government does not want to cooperate with us on AI. They want to beat us in AI. Now, yes, as with nuclear weapons or any other — climate change or any other thing that threatens all of us, it would be wonderful if we could cooperate with the Chinese. But in the Cold War, we were dealing with the Russians, different actors, different system, different character, different calculations. The Chinese under Xi Jinping don’t operate that way. It’s not going to happen. Now, when they do meet, what the Trump administration is going to do is they’re going to try to press the Chinese on distillation, stealing American AI. It’s true that Chinese tech companies steal a lot of American AI. The Chinese don’t want to talk about that, okay. And when the Chinese talk about regulating AI, they talk about controlling it so that it doesn’t threaten their rule. And we talk about it as keeping our freedoms free. And that doesn’t reconcile, it doesn’t match. So I think the chances for U.S.-China cooperation on AI are very low, quite unfortunately.”
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