Sam Altman continues to call for coordinated international regulation of artificial intelligence. The OpenAI co-founder and CEO visited Seoul this past weekend to meet with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who issued a statement saying it is important to act “with a sense of speed” in establishing international standards or face unwanted “side effects.” Altman also virtually delivered a keynote address to Chinese AI researchers at an annual conference hosted by the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, calling on China to participate in global rulemaking.

Despite tensions with the West, about a dozen U.S. and UK notables participated in the event. In addition to Altman, other BAAI conference speakers included former Google Brain researcher Geoff Hinton, MIT professor Max Tegmark and Meta Platforms chief AI scientist Yann LeCun.

Representatives from Nvidia and generative AI firms Anthropic and Midjourney also spoke at the conference. Altman, who opened the session on AI safety, called China’s AI researchers “some of the best AI talent in the world” and said he hopes they “will make great contributions,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

Locals speaking at the event were from China’s top universities and tech firms, including search giant Baidu, speech-recognition firm iFLYTEK, and telecom giant Huawei. The U.S. has sanctioned the latter two.

Despite such friction, the BAAI conference “has become one of the country’s most prominent forums for bringing together Chinese and Western researchers,” WSJ writes, adding that “this year’s proceedings covered a breadth of topics ranging from the latest large language models and next-generation semiconductor design to applications of AI in life sciences and self-driving cars.”

Among U.S. lawmakers, anxieties of China supplanting U.S. technological leadership have fueled regulatory discussions. WSJ cites a paper by the Brookings Institution that suggests China currently “produces more high-quality research papers in the field than the U.S. but still lags behind in ‘paradigm-shifting breakthroughs.’”

WSJ posits that “in generative AI, the latest wave of top-tier AI systems, China remains one to two years behind U.S. development and reliant on U.S. innovations.” The Chinese government has made AI a priority, simultaneously advancing regulation to keep the technology in compliance with rules controlling its heavily censored Internet.

OpenAI doesn’t make ChatGPT available in China, though users there have found workarounds. “Both Google and OpenAI, which has partnered with Microsoft, have restricted access to their powerful artificial intelligence chatbots in Hong Kong,” CNBC reports, citing “fears over how China’s influence will impact its ability to maintain an open Internet.”

“Last month, top U.S. and European officials met in Sweden to discuss oversight of AI, where they pledged to help establish voluntary codes of conduct,” CNN writes, adding that Elon Musk, who in April announced X.AI, has been part of the global tech conversation, meeting “with senior government officials” during a trip to China this month, while Altman’s world tour in recent weeks has had stops in Israel, United Arab Emirates and India.

Related:
U.S. Tech Giants Are Slowly Cutting Off Hong Kong Internet Users, The Wall Street Journal, 6/12/23
Xi Prepares China for ‘Extreme’ Scenarios, Including Conflict with the West, The Wall Street Journal, 6/12/23
Americans Should Prepare for Cyber Sabotage from Chinese Hackers, U.S. Official Warns, Reuters, 6/12/23