China may drop unified AI rules due to ‘significant disagreements’, time

Zheng made the comments last Friday in Beijing on the sidelines of the Confucius and Aristotle Symposium on Ancient Wisdom for Modern Challenges, which was jointly organized by the Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, the Development Solutions Network of UN Sustainable and the Mencius Foundation.

China has drafted its own AI legislation and a draft of a unified law was submitted for review to the country’s top legislative body, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), according to its annual legislative work plan made public in May.

But Zheng said the submission was only at a very early stage and there was no timeline for the draft, suggesting a lack of progress.

Zheng said that instead, the regulations to be implemented would be sector or industry specific, as AI technologies were constantly and rapidly evolving.

During the annual “two-session” meeting in March, business and political elites presented various proposals on how to set AI regulations and laws.

Lou Xiangping, an NPC representative and chairman of China Mobile’s Henan branch, called for the construction of a “systematic legal and regulatory framework” for AI. However, Zhang Yi, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a senior partner in the Beijing office of law firm King & Wood Mallesons, warned that “major legal interventions could hinder the healthy and orderly development of AI,” according to reports from Chinese media.

Zheng, with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said China could take a more balanced approach to AI lawmaking compared to the EU and the United States, given AI’s rapid advances and the potential risks it poses.

“On the one hand, we want to promote the development of artificial intelligence, as development is a key topic for China. On the other hand, we don’t want this technology to bring negative impacts on a large scale,” he said.

The EU AI Act has classified AI systems into unacceptable, high, limited and minimal risk levels and has provided different rules and requirements for organizations to develop AI. It has also banned technology deemed to be “cognitive manipulation of human behaviour” that is “considered a threat to humans”.

Zheng said such a ban would be “very unrealistic” for China’s tech industries as “AI more or less manipulates human behavior, including the simplest recommendation algorithms.”

Zheng added that the US does not have and does not intend to have such a law as its society encourages innovation and market growth, while the EU applies stricter rules not only to protect individual rights but also to restrict companies. dominant American due to the relative weakness of the EU in the technology sector.

The opportunities and risks of AI have quickly pushed the technology up diplomatic agendas at meetings between major powers as the EU has taken the lead in regulating AI.