We need to talk about AI
Notas del episodio
There’s been a litany of warnings about AI and its potential dangers. A top safety researcher at Anthropic, one of the biggest AI companies in the US, warned the technology is advancing at a pace so fast that there’s a 10% chance it “could kill all humans” within the next decade.
Such concerns have led to calls for a coordinated action in the US to slow down the development of the technology. But there are also some who have challenged the need for guardrails – including US President Donald Trump – arguing that it would surrender America's dominance over the technology to its rivals.
China’s AI industry has also been accelerating in lockstep with the US, despite American efforts to restrict the pace of China’s tech development.
AI services from DeepSeek, Moonshot and Zhipu.AI, among others, have continually shown that Chinese competitors are either level or closely behind the capabilities of leading US labs.
On this episode of Asia Specific, host Mariko Oi speaks to Laura Bicker and Jing Yang. Laura is the BBC’s China correspondent and has been reporting on China’s advances in AI. Jing is the Asia bureau chief at The Information, a publication focusing on the tech industry. Together, they unpack the challenges that both the US and China face in terms of the technology and how the two countries are split on the how to regulate AI and the pace of development. We try to answer if the widening chasm can be bridged.
Also on this episode, Bernard Leong, the former head of AI in South East Asia for Amazon Web Services, explains how AI could materially threaten humanity, and why they would do that in the first place.
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