Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, recently said the world should collectively slow the development of A.I. until we get a better handle on the safety risks this new technology poses. Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk voiced their support for this plan.
American A.I. companies know they can’t tap the brakes on A.I. by themselves — China has to go along. Chinese companies such as DeepSeek, Z.ai and Moonshot have A.I. models nearly as powerful as Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s. And they likely pose many of the same risks; terrorists could potentially use their tools to carry out cyberattacks or design biological weapons. Many people hope the upcoming summit between President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, could be an opportunity to make some headway on such a partnership.
Too often, however, A.I. safety experts assume that China has the same concerns as we do about A.I. The reality is, the Chinese have a different set of worries. And until we understand what those are, cooperation with China will be impossible.
Generally speaking, China doesn’t fret as much about A.I. as an existential threat to humanity. You don’t see its political leaders or the founders of Chinese A.I. companies warning that superhuman A.I. is “probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity,” as Mr. Altman wrote in 2015. It’s not central to Chinese A.I. policymaking, nor a part of Chinese tech culture.
That’s mainly because of differences in how the two countries think about A.I. training and development. The leading American A.I. companies are hyper-focused on advancing “recursive self-improvement” — using A.I. systems themselves to develop even better A.I. systems. There are fears that this feedback loop could accelerate the pace of A.I. development to the point where humans no longer have control over the process. American tech leaders believe this takeoff point might be around the corner.
Chinese A.I. companies are also working on recursive self-improvement. But because of their limited access to A.I. computing power and the slower pace of progress, they believe the takeoff moment is still technologically a long way off. Chinese policymakers seem to share that outlook and so are more focused on building resilient A.I. supply chains and increasing A.I. adoption throughout the economy.
So why would the Chinese agree to a slowdown in A.I. development if they don’t think a crisis is imminent? If anything, Chinese A.I. companies are trying to move faster, hoping to narrow the performance gap with American A.I. models.
For the moment, Chinese policymakers are more worried about the political and social risks caused by A.I. They don’t want it creating deepfakes of political leaders or saying the “wrong” things about Taiwan or Tiananmen Square. They don’t want A.I. chatbots to create psychological dependencies or threaten child safety, or set off social instability or a mass movement powerful enough to topple the Communist Party.
China’s A.I. regulations today are generally aimed at these types of risks. Most new public-facing A.I. models must be registered with the government and pass a battery of tests before they can be released. China has created extensive rules requiring labeling of A.I.-generated content and limiting how humanlike A.I. chatbots can operate.
A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry has dismissed U.S. calls for a slowdown as “fear-mongering” intended to hold the country back in the race for A.I. dominance. (Indeed, Mr. Trump has said he opposes a slowdown specifically to prevent China from catching up.)
There are some, limited signs that Beijing is starting to take large-scale A.I. threats more seriously. Two types of risks have received special attention in China.
The first is cybersecurity. This year, many Chinese users downloaded a popular A.I. agent tool called OpenClaw and used it to automate computer-based tasks. Chinese officials quickly issued a warning that A.I. tools like OpenClaw could expose users to data leaks and cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Then in April, Anthropic announced that it had trained a new model called Mythos that demonstrated significantly elevated cyberattack abilities. It did not take long for the Chinese to appreciate the national security implications. The head of China’s main security agency recently issued a rare warning that the cybersecurity landscape was changing, and critical infrastructure was now vulnerable to A.I.-led cyberattacks from adversaries. He pointed to some of the latest models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Adding to these concerns, a U.S.-based security company recently used A.I. to develop an experimental tool that could rapidly compromise accounts on WeChat, the Chinese messaging platform with 1.4 billion monthly users. Although the tool was not released into the wild, it gave the Chinese pause.
The second A.I. risk that’s gaining attention in China is runaway A.I operating beyond human control. China has watched closely as rogue American models have broken out and breached other websites’ security. The OpenAI models’ attack in July on Hugging Face, an A.I. infrastructure company, has been widely covered in Chinese state media.
Runaway A.I. is being talked about in higher levels of China’s government. Mr. Xi mentioned the risks of “loss of control” in July. More recently, a senior cybersecurity official in its Cyberspace Administration warned of “extreme loss of control,” citing the A.I. breakout incidents in the United States.
These shifting views of A.I. risks suggests both countries may be motivated to cooperate on A.I. safety out of sheer national interest. Neither country wants terrorists to use A.I. to create viruses. Neither country wants autonomous A.I. systems to accidentally hack its companies or institutions.
On the other hand, each country’s suspicions of the other will make any kind of agreements about A.I. safety difficult. China is very worried that America could use A.I. to enhance its cyber and military weapons aimed at China. And same is true in the other direction. Without a base line level of mutual understanding, the world’s two A.I. superpowers are bound to talk past each other.
Fortunately, that common ground is possible. Rather than jump straight into debates over a global slowdown or an arms control treaty for A.I., the United States and China should start with something much more basic: realizing and acknowledging how the other side sees A.I. risks. From there, they can start to explore areas where both sides share an interest in mitigating threats from third parties or even the technology itself.
There will be disagreements to resolve, and plenty of quibbles on details to sort out. But if the two countries can agree they want to avoid A.I. catastrophe, cooperation on A.I. safety is not such an unrealistic possibility.
Kyle Chan is a fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is an expert on China’s technology development and industrial policy, and the author of the High Capacity newsletter.
Source photograph by Getty Images.
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