China calls U.S. AI executives’ slowdown appeal ‘fear-mongering’

Summary

China’s Foreign Ministry rejected calls by U.S. AI executives to slow the development of advanced AI, saying that fear-mongering, confrontation and competition would disrupt global AI governance. The response followed warnings from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk about risks from rapid advances. Separately, China’s Minister of State Security Chen Yixin called for faster construction of a system to prevent and control AI security risks, while describing AI as a central arena of technological and strategic competition. The debate has also played out in markets: AI-related stocks fell on Monday, and SoftBank, a major OpenAI investor, declined 10% in Japan. Amodei argued that developing AI too quickly is reckless, but slowing U.S. companies too much could allow Chinese Communist Party-associated projects to pull ahead and create national-security risks. President Donald Trump rejected the executives’ calls, saying the United States should preserve its AI lead. President Xi Jinping, meanwhile, said China would help lead AI collaboration and development among developing countries. Georgetown researcher Helen Toner estimated that China’s best models are six to nine months behind the best U.S. models, but said it is unclear whether China’s advances depend on following U.S. progress closely or would slow if the U.S. frontier did.