China says AI CEOs' call for a slowdown is 'fear mongering'

BEIJING — China on Monday pushed back on calls by U.S. AI executives for companies to slow down the development of the cutting-edge technology.

"Fear mongering, confrontation, competition will just disrupt [the] process of global AI governance," Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, said on Monday, per an English translation published by Reuters.

He was responding to a question about U.S. CEOs, including Anthropic's Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk, calling for the industry to slow down because of the dangers rapid advances in the technology pose.

China's Minister of State Security, Chen Yixin, published an article on Sunday calling for the acceleration of construction of an AI security risk prevention and control system.

The field of AI has become "the main battleground for global technological competition and a new arena for strategic rivalry among major powers," the minister said, adding there was a need for "healthy and orderly" development of the technology.

AI-related stocks slumped on Monday , with SoftBank — one of the biggest investors in OpenAI — down 10% in Japan.

"Not building the technology deprives humanity of benefits or simply places AI in the hands of authoritarian powers, while building it too fast is reckless," Amodei said in an essay published on Saturday.

He noted, however, that pacing would be limited by the lead that U.S. companies have over "authoritarian regimes, chiefly the Chinese Communist Party."