An essay by Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei calling for slowing down AI development may look like a rational statement focused on safety risks, but it is really a "Cold War playbook" targeting China, the state-backed Global Times has said in an editorial.
In the essay published on Saturday and later endorsed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Amodei outlined a framework to pace the development of frontier AI model capabilities and create more time to manage mounting safety risks.
Amodei also urged the US to strengthen chip export controls on China and crackdown on alleged model distillation by Chinese AI labs. He also told CBS News on Sunday that the "toughest dilemma" over his proposal to slow AI advancement was if China and other nations chose not to do the same.
The Chinese government has not yet issued an official statement specifically responding to Amodei’s remarks.
However, a response has emerged in Chinese state media, with the Global Times, published by the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, arguing that the true agenda of Amodei's essay was “to attempt to curb China's AI development through technological barriers and regulatory monopolies, uphold Washington's monopolistic hegemony in cutting-edge technology, and exclude China from the global AI governance system.”
"This 'silent AI Cold War' is hypocritical and short-sighted," it said, adding that excluding China from global AI innovation would "significantly increase the trial-and-error costs and risks of loss of control in global AI development".
US lawmakers have urged new rules to govern AI systems after dire warnings from two Anthropic researchers that rapidly progressing AI could lead to the extinction of the human race in the not-too-distant future.
‘We're leading China’
US President Donald Trump brushed aside calls to slow down AI on Sunday, saying that "very negative forces" were raising exaggerated concerns.
"We're leading China in AI. We're the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins," Trump said.
The US president dismissed calls to curb the sector's rapid progress, claiming that "a lot of negative forces" are exaggerating hypothetical risks and raising issues that will never materialise.
While acknowledging that authorities "can put guardrails" on technological systems, Trump maintained that his primary objective centres on preserving America's edge.
The US and China are planning to discuss frontier AI safety risks in mid-September, sources have said, and the issue could be raised during a summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping on September 24.
The US leader visited China in May, and later extended an invitation to Xi for a state visit to the US scheduled for September 24.
