In Beijing with Donald Trump, the US Treasury Secretary stated that the United States and China have discussed implementing safeguards for artificial intelligence, particularly in light of concerns about this technology being used for cyberattacks.
Competing in the race for AI dominance, the United States and China set aside their rivalry to address the dangers of this technology. Both countries exchanged ideas on implementing safeguards for AI, as confirmed by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday.
“We will discuss AI safeguards with the Chinese,” the Secretary told American media CNBC from China. He mentioned that Beijing has “a very advanced AI industry,” although “considerably behind the United States.”
Secretary Bessent, part of the delegation accompanying President Donald Trump in Beijing, indicated that the two countries, sharing concerns about AI enabling cyberattacks, will develop a “protocol” outlining the way forward on AI matters. This protocol will help ensure that non-state actors do not acquire these models.
However, he stressed to CNBC that the US government does not want to stifle innovation and is “very pleased” with how major technology companies have implemented these models so far.
Last week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) called for enhanced international cooperation on this issue due to the risks of cyberattacks utilizing the latest AI tools. This concern was particularly highlighted by the introduction of the startup Anthropic’s new model, Mythos, which identified “thousands” of “zero-day” vulnerabilities in online-accessible programs during internal testing.
A “zero-day” vulnerability means that designers and users are unaware of the weakness. Without intervention to address them, these vulnerabilities could potentially provide hackers with multiple angles of attack.
