Prospects for US-China Cooperation to Reduce AI Risks

Artificial intelligence is emerging as both a powerful source of competition between the United States and China and an area where the two countries may have a shared interest in reducing risk. Washington and Beijing have sharply different views about technology, national security, and governance, yet they also face some of the same potential dangers from increasingly capable AI systems—from cyberattacks and biological threats to unintended escalation and the loss of human control over critical decisions.

With U.S.-China talks on AI expected to take place ahead of the Trump-Xi summit later this month, a pressing question is whether the two countries can carve out practical areas of cooperation even as they compete intensely over the technology itself. What could realistically be achieved in those talks, where do American and Chinese concerns about AI risks converge or diverge, and can the two sides keep discussions about risk reduction separate from the broader struggle over technology and export controls?

To unpack those objectives and what a credible outcome might look like, we are joined by Mark MacCarthy. Mark is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in the Governance Studies program's Center for Technology Innovation and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches on the governance of emerging technology, AI ethics, and privacy. He is the author of Regulating Digital Industries: How Public Oversight Can Encourage Competition, Protect Privacy, and Ensure Free Speech. He also recently co-authored an article on how the US and China can cooperate to reduce urgent AI risks, which you can find on the Brookings website.

Timestamps: 
[00:00] Introduction
[02:17] The Need for US-China AI Cooperation and Risks
[04:32] Converging on AI Risk Reduction
[07:18] Setting Guardrails Amidst Competition
[10:14] World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation
[13:33] Trump-Xi Talks: A Technical Exchange
[18:31] Who Needs to Be at the Table
[21:25] Low Hanging Fruit for Cooperation
[24:39] Assessing Bill Gates’ Recommendations
[28:30] Different Approaches to Technology and Governance