Podcast remote connection: AI under control – What China is doing differently

Control over humanity, risk of outbreak, autonomous swarms of agents: There is a lot of buzz about artificial intelligence right now. The tech bosses of US AI companies (Anthropic, Open AI) have recently called for more regulation of AI and are painting dark visions on the wall. The scenarios extend to the extinction of humanity – and that in the not even very distant future. Since then, the whole world has been discussing how realistic these possibilities are. And wonders what regulation could look like.

Meanwhile, China has long since become the biggest competitor when it comes to AI - and is already regulating AI systems - in its own way.

When Silicon Valley tech bosses warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence, Beijing instinctively reacted with suspicion. The state-run Global Times, for example, viewed the debate as an attempt to curb China's rapidly advancing AI industry. The State Department also said US calls to slow technological development were “fear mongering”.

There are more and more experts in Beijing who fear a loss of control. On Sunday, of all people, Chen Yixin, Minister of the notorious State Security, published the most urgent appeal yet: “China must keep control over the development and regulation of artificial intelligence firmly in its own hands,” the intelligence chief wrote in an essay.

He warned of the external and internal dangers of the rapidly developing technology: Militarily, it will play a "key role" on the battlefield, and foreign AI models also pose an increased threat of espionage. But above all, according to Chen, AI could be misused as a tool of cognitive warfare: "This directly threatens our political security, the security of our system and our ideological security."

This episode of the remote connection is about monitoring of and through AI, about the question of what supposed socialism has to do with AI, but also about: Can we learn something from China, despite all the reservations when it comes to regulation?

Foreign editor Judith Poppe in conversation with Fabian Kretschmer, the taz correspondent for China and Korea.

Long-distance connection – The taz foreign podcast appears every week on taz.de and everywhere there are podcasts.