The world risks “losing control” of frontier technology like artificial intelligence if governments are too slow to regulate it, China’s premier warned attendees at Summer Davos on Wednesday.
Fears are growing over AI-driven disruption of labor markets and the security risks it poses – from use in conflict to breaches of cyber defenses and the potential creation of new bioweapons.
“The speed of technological progress is unprecedented,” Premier Li Qiang said in a speech, noting that artificial intelligence has increased the “efficiency of innovation”.
“However, we cannot ignore the increasingly obvious risks of losing control of technology and ethical lapses,” he said.
“If governance in this area fails to keep pace, there could be serious consequences.”
Technology breakthroughs are seen as drivers of economic growth, but shadows include concerns about job losses and geopolitics, speakers said at the annual conference held in China by the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum (WEF).
Mirek Dusek, WEF’s managing director, told AFP on Tuesday that AI opens the door to new opportunities in education, healthcare and other fields.
“We’ve been blessed with a lot of technological advances lately, but the key imperative for decision makers around the world is really: how do you make sure this matters in the real economy?” Dusek said.
There is a “risk of a backlash against some of these technologies,” he warned.
Adding to the pressure on the international economic system is the US-Israel war with Iran, which has hampered shipping from the oil-rich Middle East.
‘tepid environment’
These headwinds have led the World Bank to cut its global growth forecast for this year to the lowest level since the Covid pandemic.
The world economy is currently facing “a tepid environment,” Dusek said.
Li Qiang’s speech at the Annual Meeting of Young Champions – held this year in the northeastern port city of Dalian – provided the opportunity to deliver a message to the influential group of technology and business leaders in attendance.
Beijing’s number two leader characterized China’s economy as a “safe haven” in a world now struggling with “multiple shocks, including global energy shortages and severe disruptions to production and supply chains.”
The country has “injected a valuable dose of security into an increasingly insecure world,” Li said.
China’s economy – second in size only to that of the United States – has, however, found it difficult in recent years to keep up with its dangerous pace of development in previous decades.
Despite a spectacular boom in exports and AI technology, sluggish household consumption and an entrenched debt crisis in the property sector have weighed on growth since the pandemic.
Complicating matters is Beijing’s troubled relationship with Washington.
Graham Allison, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, told AFP in Dalian that a potential war between the two superpowers is very much on the table.
Allison is known for coining the term “Thucydides’ trap,” a political theory that describes an increased likelihood of war when a rising new power—such as China—competes with an established power, such as the United States.
Avoiding the pitfalls of history
However, the recent engagement between the Chinese and US presidents is reason for optimism that a war can be avoided, Allison said.
At a summit in Beijing last month, China’s Xi Jinping asked Donald Trump whether countries could “overcome the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’ and create a new paradigm for great power relations.”
Xi “clearly understands” and his mention of the historically obscure concept “was not accidental,” Allison said.
Trump, meanwhile, is “messy in his own way,” he added, calling the Iran war this year a “terrible mistake” and “unnecessary.”
But Trump “understands that China is different,” especially after the country throttled U.S. access to critical rare earth minerals in response to high tariffs imposed by Trump, Allison said.
“These two presidents are clearly trying to redefine the relationship or reframe it in a way that will overcome the Thucydides trap.”
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