Paris AI Summit: Former Chinese Foreign Ministry official and "AI Godfather" clashed fiercely at the meeting
A former Chinese Foreign Ministry official made fun of a major international artificial intelligence (AI) safety report in his face, which was led by Professor Yoshua Bengio, the "godfather of AI," and co-authored by 96 global experts.
Fu Ying, former vice foreign minister and Chinese ambassador to the UK, is currently a scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Fu Ying and Professor Bengio spoke at a panel discussion ahead of the two-day Global Artificial Intelligence Summit in Paris on Monday (February 10).
The aim of the Paris AI Summit is to bring together world leaders, technology executives and academics to examine the impact of AI on society, governance and the environment.
Fu Ying first thanked Canadian Professor Bengio for providing this "very, very long" document, and added that the Chinese translation was about 400 pages long and she had not finished reading it.
She also took a dig at the name of the AI Safety Institute, of which Prof Bengio is a member.
China now has its own similar agency; but Fu Ying pointed out that China decided to call it the "Artificial Intelligence Development and Security Network" because there are already many similar agencies, but this wording emphasizes the importance of cooperation.
The AI Action Summit in Paris welcomed guests from 80 countries, and was attended by American technology giants such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Elon Musk was not on the guest list, but it's unclear if he will join.
A focus of the summit, which will focus on regulating AI in an increasingly divided world, comes just weeks after China's DeepSeek unveiled a powerful, low-cost AI model that challenged U.S. dominance and sparked a massive industry shift.
“China-US confrontation hinders the development of AI”
The fierce confrontation between the two sides is a symbol of the global political competition in the powerful "AI arms race", but Fu Ying also expressed regret for the negative impact of the current antagonism between China and the United States on the progress of AI security.
“When science was on an upward trajectory, the relationship went in the wrong direction, affecting solidarity and cooperation in managing risks,” she said.
"It's very unfortunate."
Fu Ying carefully paints a behind-the-scenes peek at China’s AI, describing the “explosion” of innovation since China first announced its AI development plan in 2017, five years before ChatGPT became a viral sensation in the West.
She added that “when (development) happens quickly, dangerous things can happen,” without elaborating on what that might be.
“The Chinese move faster (than Westerners), but it’s also fraught with problems,” she said.
Fu Ying believes that building AI tools on an open source basis, meaning everyone can see how they work and thus contribute to improving them, is the most effective way to ensure that technology does not cause harm.
Most American tech giants do not share the technology that drives their products.
Fu Ying said open source provides humans with "better opportunities to discover and solve problems", adding that "the lack of transparency among giants makes people nervous".
But Professor Bengio disagrees.
His point is that open source also opens the door to abuse by criminals.
However, he also acknowledged that "from a security perspective," DeepSeek, a Chinese AI assistant built using open source architecture, is more vulnerable to problems than ChatGPT, whose code has not yet been shared by its creator, OpenAI.
On Tuesday, world leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. Vice President JD Vance will hold talks on the sidelines of the summit.
Topics of discussion included how AI will impact the world of work, how it can be used for the public good, and how its risks can be mitigated.
A new $400 million partnership was also announced between several countries to support AI initiatives that serve the public interest, such as healthcare.
In an interview with the BBC, UK Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said he believed it would be dangerous for the UK to fall behind in technology adoption.
Dr Laura Gilbert, who advises the government on artificial intelligence, said she believed it was vital to maintain the National Health Service (NHS) because of the efficiencies it promises. "How are you going to fund the NHS if you don't get a grip on AI?" she asked.
Matt Clifford, who drafted the UK's AI action plan, which has been fully embraced by the government, warned that AI technology would be "more radical" than when computers first entered the workplace and typing was replaced by word processing.
"The industrial revolution was the automation of manual labour; AI is the automation of cognitive labour," said Marc Warner, boss of artificial intelligence company Faculty, adding that he did not believe his two-year-old would "get a job as we know it today".
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