TEHRAN (Bazaar) – Professor Geoffrey Carliner, professor at Boston University says: The competition and distrust between China and the US are probably too great for them to cooperate in designing AI weapons.
Following is the full text of the interview.
Q: US President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco. What was the importance of this meeting?
The meeting between Biden and Xi will reduce tensions between the US and China but will not change the competition and rivalry between them significantly. The two leaders agreed on several points. China will reduce exports of fentanyl to the US. The two countries will begin discussions on how to decrease the risks of using artificial intelligence for military purposes. And they will resume military to military contacts to prevent misunderstandings and escalation, for instance in the South China Sea where US and Chinese ships and planes are in close contact.
Q: US President Joe Biden in this meeting announced: With the Chinese President regarding the expansion of cooperation in the fields of combating, we agreed on drugs, military relations, and artificial intelligence. What is the importance of cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence for the two countries?
Both the US and China are making major efforts to develop artificial intelligence (AI) for military applications. AI has the potential to greatly increase a country’s military power, but there are risks that a weapon controlled by AI without adequate oversight by a human being could make very bad decisions. Both China and the US would benefit from figuring out how to prevent such bad decisions by AI, but agreeing on how to do that, and sharing technology on how to do that, seems unlikely. The competition and distrust between China and the US are probably too great for them to cooperate in designing AI weapons.
Q: A senior American official said by quoting Xi Jinping's words with Biden that China prefers to achieve ‘reunification’ with Taiwan through peaceful means, but in certain circumstances, we may also use force. What is your assessment of Xi's words about Taiwan? Do you think the Taiwan crisis will bring the two countries to war?
Xi would like Beijing to gain control over Taiwan while he is president, but he expects to continue as president for a long time. Of course he would rather achieve control peacefully, but in the future he may be willing to use force to occupy and control Taiwan. This is unlikely to happen for several years, and the current situation could continue for a long time. If China did invade Taiwan, it is very uncertain if the US would use force to defend Taiwan or would help Taiwan resist an invasion the way it has helped Ukraine resist Russia’s invasion – by supplying weapons and intelligence information, and applying economic sanctions.
Q: Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser of the White House, said before the meeting between the presidents of the United States and China: Biden believes that there is no substitute for face-to-face diplomacy to manage the complex relations between the two countries. We anticipate that the leaders will discuss some of the most fundamental elements of the US-China bilateral relationship, including the continued importance of strengthening open lines of communication and responsibly managing competition so that it does not devolve into conflict. What do you think of these remarks?
Neither country wants a war. Neither country is going to disappear. Therefore the US and China must learn to get along, even if they compete for power and influence around the world. Sullivan and Biden believe that face-to-face meetings between the leaders of the two countries, and also meetings between officials at lower levels, will help to avoid conflicts and keep the competition between the US and China peaceful.
Q: The President of China said in the meeting with Biden, “This planet can accommodate China and America (at the same time)”. Some believe that this statement proves that, contrary to some opinions, Beijing was not and is not following the decline and fall of the US. What is your assessment?
Xi and the Chinese leadership think that China’s economic and political power will continue to grow faster in the future than US power. But they realize that the US economy is still very strong and that the US is still very powerful politically. Xi does not think that the US economy or military is declining, much less that it will fall, but he does think that it is declining relative to China. For instance, China’s role in improving relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, or in creating an organization of developing countries like the expanded BRICS could not have happened five or ten years ago. China expects that its influence around the world will continue to increase in the future, but it does not think that US influence will disappear, or even decline dramatically. Therefore it thinks that the US and China should learn to get along, even if they disagree about many issues.
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