Yes, they can. As the world’s two major powers in AI technology, the U.S. and China must work together to build capacity, contribute to AI for developing countries, bridge the digital divide and help achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
On March 25, after a visit to China, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called for cooperation between the United States and China to jointly address the potential risks that artificial general intelligence (AGI) may pose to humanity. He argued that what Soviet-American nuclear arms control was to world stability since the 1970s, U.S.-China collaboration on AI currently is for the same objective.
Making sure we effectively control these rapidly advancing AI systems is essential for tomorrow’s world, Friedman wrote. He pointed out sharply: “Once AGI arrives, if we are not assured that these systems will be embedded with common trust standards, the United States and China will not be able to do anything together.”
In the context of AI governance, the word “trust” is frequently mentioned — trust in machines, trust in human-machine collaboration, trust in the users of AI systems, trust in institutions and trust between nations. Trust is a fundamental element and a valuable resource.
Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari recently spoke at the China Development Forum, offering his perspective on trust. He was quoted by saying: “We should build more trust between humans before we develop truly super intelligent AI agents. …At its core, trust is essential for survival. …All over the world, trust between humans is collapsing.” Together humans can control AI, he added, “but if we fight one another, AI will control us.”
I recently attended the inaugural Global Conference on AI, Security and Ethics organized by UNIDIR and Microsoft, where there was lots of talk about how geopolitical competition undermines trust between nations, thereby delaying — and even jeopardizing — the progress of international AI governance.
Then, what exactly is trust? What are the standards by which trust can be defined? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, trust is “to believe that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable.” The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.” In the Modern Chinese Dictionary, trust (xinren) is explained as “believing in someone to the extent of being willing to entrust them with responsibilities.” In the Xinhua Dictionary, the character “信” means not to doubt and to consider something reliable, while “任” means to trust and to rely upon.
In the field of international relations, trust refers to a state or actor’s positive expectations regarding another party’s intentions, commitments and actions. Taken together, these definitions seem to encompass the following essential elements: credibility, predictability and reliability.
Can the United States and China, as Friedman hopes, establish a basic level of trust and carry out urgently needed cooperation in the field of AI governance? To answer this question, we need not only to analyze the current state of U.S.-China relations but also take into account the inherent characteristics of AI technology itself.
From the perspective of U.S.-China relations, there currently exists a serious trust deficit between the two countries. Mutual suspicion and fear, as well as uncertainty about each other's intentions, have long influenced the trajectory of bilateral relations. In the early 21st century, China’s rapid economic and military growth sparked widespread debate within the United States about how to respond. The Belt and Road Initiative, Made in China 2025 and China’s significant increase in investment in high-tech industries have fueled U.S. concerns that China might challenge its global leadership.
In December 2017, in its National Security Strategy, the first Trump administration labeled China a “rival.” The 2022 National Security Strategy identified China as “the most consequential geopolitical challenge” to the United States and positioned China as a strategic rival. It drastically narrowed the space for dialogue and cooperation between the two countries.
Several U.S. officials have publicly stated that ensuring absolute superiority in technological competition with China is essential. To achieve this, the U.S. has expanded the concept of national security, established foreign investment screening mechanisms, strengthened export controls on key technologies and equipment, restricted technology transfers to China and placed Chinese companies and institutions on the export control entity list — all in an effort to safeguard a technological edge in the name of national security.
China views these U.S. actions as deliberate attempts to hinder its development, preserve American hegemony and deprive China of its right to development. Further, during the latter part of Trump’s first term, ideological elements began to take center stage in U.S. strategy toward China. In May 2020, the Trump administration released the United States Strategic Approach to the People’s Republic of China, elevating the U.S.-China rivalry to an ideological level and asserting that competition between the two countries spans political, economic and societal dimensions. Following this, several senior Trump administration officials delivered speeches attacking China’s political system and criticizing its domestic and foreign policies.
Amid the broader context of strategic rivalry and geopolitical tension, mutual suspicion and fear between the two major powers have intensified, exacerbating the uncertainty surrounding each other’s intentions. This growing distrust makes credibility impossible to achieve. Moreover, the early-stage foreign policy of Trump 2.0 has made predictability a scarce resource in the bilateral relationship.
From the perspective of AI technology itself, despite its remarkable advancements in recent years, several unresolved issues persist, including such things as hallucinations and black boxes. In the International AI Safety Report published in January, Professor Yoshua Bengio and his team classifies general-purpose AI risks into three categories: malicious use risks, risks from malfunctions and systemic risks.
The report also pointed out that, general-purpose AI can suffer reliability issues that include confabulations or hallucinations; failures at performing common-sense reasoning; and inferences, or failures to reflect contextually relevant, up-to-date, unbiased knowledge and understanding. It went further to say that instances of reliability failure can create risks, such as physical or psychological damage to individuals; reputational, legal, and financial damage to organizations; and misinformation that impacts governance processes.
Meanwhile, although countries have been enacting laws and regulations to govern AI domestically, there remains no binding international law or treaty addressing AI technology at the global level. In his article, Friedman predicted that if China and the U.S. were to develop their own AI systems independently, much of their trade would stagnate, reducing exchanges to basic goods like soybeans and soy sauce. “It will be a world of high-tech feudalism,” he warned. This underscores how the inherent instability and unreliability of AI technology could layer China-U.S. cooperation and competition with challenges.
In May last year, China and the United States held their first intergovernmental dialogue on AI in Geneva. According to the news release, both sides assessed the dialogue positively, recognizing the need to ensure the safety of AI technology and reiterating their continued commitment to implement the important consensus reached at the San Francisco meeting of their two leaders. However, there were significant differences and misalignments in terms of the focus of AI governance. The Chinese side emphasized the development of AI technology, expressing a stern position on U.S. trade restrictions; highlighting the fairness of AI development, believing that the UN should play a leading role in global AI governance; and proposing the establishment of a global framework for AI governance and standards.
In contrast, the U.S. tended to focus on the safety risks and governance of AI, emphasizing the need to ensure that AI systems are safe, reliable and trustworthy, and expressing concerns over the so-called misuse of AI by China.
In November President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden met in Lima, Chile, where they agreed to maintain human control over the use of nuclear weapons, a move that was widely acclaimed by the international community. But nearly a year has passed since the last meeting of China-U.S. Intergovernmental Dialogue on AI, and a second meeting has not yet been scheduled. Meanwhile, the Biden administration last year continued to escalate AI technology export control measures against China. The recent trade war started by the U.S. against China has made the situation even worse.
Friedman recognized the necessity and urgency of cooperation between the U.S. and China on AI governance, and rebuilding the basic level of trust is the only way out. Both sides need to take concrete steps and make adjustments — against a background of geopolitical tension — if they expect to achieve genuine dialogue and cooperation and to construct a cooperative governance framework that addresses the existential risks of AI,
Both China and the U.S. need to adjust to the perceptions and positioning of the other. If a certain degree of competition is inevitable, then we should at least avoid the vicious competition of a life-or-death struggle or zero-sum game. Setting red lines for national security is essential. Both sides should clearly define sensitive areas where cooperation and exchanges are not possible, and restrain the impulse to indefinitely expand these areas.
Once red lines have been set, attempts can be made to carry out exchanges and cooperation in areas of lower sensitivity. For example, the two countries can engage in dialogue on policies and principles of AI safety, best practices and capacity-building, to enhance mutual understanding, establish predictability and interpretability in the eyes of each other, and then gradually build trust.
Last year, the two countries sponsored joint resolutions on AI at the United Nations General Assembly, setting a good example for the international community. They should continue to jointly promote the international governance of artificial intelligence under the UN framework and explore the establishment of an authoritative organization to regulate behavior and protect actors.
Last but not least, as two major powers in AI technology and capability, the U.S. and China must work together to advance capacity-building, contribute to enhancing AI capabilities in developing countries, bridge the digital divide and help achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
