The Chinese Foreign Ministry accused American tech CEOs on Monday of “fearmongering” for suggesting a slower pace for development of artificial intelligence (AI), and for worrying that “a Chinese lead in AI would pose a grave danger for the United States and the world.”
“AI is a consequential technology for the wellbeing of all humanity. All parties should jointly promote the open and inclusive development of AI for good and for all,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a press conference on Monday.
“Fear-mongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only hamper efforts toward sound global AI governance, which serves no one’s interest,” he said.
The Chinese government was particularly upset by an essay from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei that called on his industry to “pace the frontier” – in other words, pump the brakes on the white-hot pace of AI development until its dangers can be fully understood.
“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain,” he wrote.
Amodei said “pacing” would have to be limited, in order to preserve the lead American companies currently enjoy over “authoritarian regimes, chiefly the Chinese Communist Party.”
“If we slow down by more than this amount, then (unpaced) CCP-associated projects will pull ahead, creating significant national security risk. I agree with [Treasury] Secretary Bessent that a Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the United States and the world,” he wrote.
Amodei’s recommendations included “do not sell powerful AI chips or semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China,” and “crack down on unauthorized distillation by companies in authoritarian countries.”
Distillation is the process of “training” a new or inferior AI by allowing it to have a large number of interactions with a superior program and learn to mimic its behavior. Last week, the FBI, National Security Agency (NSA), and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) published a report that found Chinese companies are “targeting U.S. AI companies to systematically extract proprietary models through knowledge distillation campaigns.”
President Donald Trump has expressed considerable skepticism about Amodei’s idea of “pacing the frontier,” in part because Trump said China would never slow down its own AI research, so America would be handing the lead in the world’s most disruptive technology to the world’s most menacing authoritarian power.
“We’re the most sophisticated country in the world and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins,” Trump said during his trip to Ireland on Sunday.
“And we could put up guardrails, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen,” he said, alluding to theories that China and other malevolent state actors — or self-interested American corporate actors — could be running propaganda campaigns to increase public distrust of AI and data centers.
Trump was more explicit on that point in a Truth Social post on Monday. “The only reason the A.I./Data Center outburst is happening is because the United States is leading, by a lot, every other country. Don’t kill the Golden Goose!” he wrote.
“The only control or “guardrails” that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” the president wrote in another Truth Social post on Monday.
Trump called Amodei out by name in this second post. “The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ – and we will continue to do so!” he wrote.
“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,” he continued.
“WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!” he concluded.