Illustration: Liu Xidan/Global Times

The UK announced on June 7 that it will host the world's first artificial intelligence (AI) summit this year, focusing on AI rules-making and regulation. Earlier, during the fourth EU-US Trade and Technology Council Ministerial Meeting in late May, the US and Europe said they are drawing up a voluntary AI code of conduct. 

They claimed that "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority," but they didn't hide their intention of making AI-related rules ahead of China. They attempt to associate an industry regulation issue that is supposed to tackle the potential challenges of technology in a neutral perspective with geopolitics and values and turn it into another tool to suppress or block technological progress in non-Western countries.

At present, the speed of artificial intelligence development far exceeds the pace of technical regulation, legal ethics, and policy evaluation, and some more far-sighted frameworks are needed to deal with unknown challenges. However, the US and Europe took the lead in formulating a code of conduct in the field of AI, obviously based on ideological prejudice and the needs of the US in major power competition.

The US and Europe hope to develop common standards on AI among democracies, as China makes rapid gains. It is not difficult to see that the US and Europe intend to regard the development of technologies in countries with different ideologies as "problems" and unilaterally discredit the development of these countries to achieve the purpose of politically mobilizing public opinion to smear them.

In addition to containment by rules, the US and Europe are actually promoting trade protection measures that will attempt to limit China's AI development. For example, last year, the US took the lead in formulating an export ban on GPUs and other core chips that support AI computing power to China. Recently, it plans to introduce a foreign investment review ban that restricts American companies from investing in the artificial intelligence industry in China. Federal agencies are weighing new restrictions on US investors from putting their capital into Chinese firms that work with AI and other sensitive technologies.

The EU has followed suit. The EU is preparing to adopt export controls on semiconductors, impose restrictions on private sector investment in Chinese tech companies, and enact rules intended to block China from dominating Europe's renewable energy market. Therefore, restricting technological products and technical exchanges and cooperation is likely to become another means of building a high wall of AI technology.

The US and Europe are eager to form alliances in the field of AI, formulate their own rules system, and take away or dismantle other countries' development paths. This will not only damage the development rights and interests of other countries, but also be detrimental to the openness and inclusiveness of science and technology for all mankind.

In fact, the development of AI requires the large-scale support of basic computing power and materials in various languages and fields to "feed" the technology industry. Only when all parties are open to exchanges and communications can development be achieved. The legal, ethical, and technological risks faced by the US and Europe in the field of AI have their own characteristics but also share commonalities with problems faced by other countries. The differences in culture and legal systems between countries mean that all parties need to participate in the formulation of basic norms in order to more fully cover humans' concerns for potential challenges posed by AI.

We call on some Western countries to give up their attempt to regard rules-making as maintaining technological hegemony and establishing a monopoly in emerging fields, and return to the digital governance framework led by the United Nations and work with developing countries with an inclusive attitude and the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits.

The author is a research fellow with the Institute of European Studies, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn