China’s state-run Global Times on Monday admitted efforts by the BRICS economic bloc to establish international standards for artificial intelligence (A.I.) research have been stymied by the simmering hostility between China and India.
The Global Times quoted “Chinese analysts” who touted the potential benefits of Chinese-Indian cooperation on A.I., “given their huge markets, development needs and respective technological strengths.”
“Yet whether such potential can be translated into concrete cooperation will depend in large part on stronger political mutual trust, as concerns in India over data security, technological dependence and strategic autonomy continue to pose obstacles,” the article grumbled.
The rest of the piece was a long passive-aggressive lament against India for not trusting China on A.I. and other high tech issues, thus undermining dictator Xi Jinping’s attempt to write the A.I. standards for the China-dominated, anti-American BRICS bloc.
At the BRICS summit currently under way in New Delhi, Xi pledged that China would “be a pioneer in establishing a BRICS A.I. open source community, support cooperation in developing and applying large language models, hold specialized AI seminars and training courses, and build an open ecosystem for A.I.”
Xi also wants China to build a “BRICS digital ecosystem cloud platform” and supervise “digital skills training, technological exchange and industrial alignment.”
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Notably, nothing said by Xi – or India, for that matter – suggested BRICS is even slightly interested in the deliberate slowdown of A.I. research promoted by some American companies. The initiative came out of nowhere last week like a social media tornado and, within a matter of days, Democrat politicians were proposing a digital gulag for artificial intelligence.
President Donald Trump was deeply skeptical of the sudden stampede for A.I. restrictions, pointing out that China would never honor such a slowdown, so the result would be handing permanent leadership in the A.I. race to the authoritarian, malevolent, and deeply irresponsible regime in Beijing.
In fact, Trump suspected China’s propaganda operation had a hand in whipping up the sudden anti-A.I., anti-data center hysteria in the United States, and he was not subtle in voicing those suspicions.
“We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against A.I. and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” the president exclaimed on Truth Social.
In the view of the Global Times, the biggest obstacle to China’s grab for the brass ring of A.I. leadership was Indian paranoia about “security and technological dependence.” The Chinese Communist paper darkly suggested that India could be throwing away its only chance to break away from the Western A.I. “ecosystem” through its reluctance to embrace the Chinese ecosystem.
“China-India cooperation in AI could face a difficult path unless mutual trust improves,” growled Zhejiang International Studies University professor and Indian studies expert Hu Zhiyong.
Hu complained that India has “frequently subjected Chinese technology and investment to scrutiny on national security and data security grounds,” creating speed bumps that could prevent India and China from working together to seize the advantage in a moment of U.S. and European hesitation.
As the Global Times noted, Indian media has been enthusiastic about the notion of creating a BRICS-wide framework for A.I. development – just not under the control of China, the world’s worst perpetrator of technology theft and cyber-espionage. The BRICS summit in New Delhi issued a statement endorsing cooperation on A.I. research, but it pointedly did not embrace China’s suggestion of a China-led “open source community” or a Chinese-engineered “cloud platform” for the entire bloc.