What I’m Hearing in China This Week About Our Shared Future – The New York Times

There is a lot of talk in Beijing this week over when President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China will meet face to face. Some Chinese experts say the two leaders need to wait a few months until Trump decides exactly what tariffs he is going to impose on China — and sees what China will do in response.

Can I just butt in and say: “Excuse me, Mr. Presidents, but you two need to get together, like, tomorrow. But it’s not to discuss the golden oldies — tariffs, trade and Taiwan.

“There is an earthshaking event coming — the birth of artificial general intelligence. The United States and China are the two superpowers closing in on A.G.I. — systems that will be as smart or smarter than the smartest human and able to learn and act on their own. Whatever you both may think you’ll be judged on by history, I assure you that whether you collaborate to create a global architecture of trust and governance over these emerging superintelligent computers, so humanity gets the best out of them and cushions their worst, will be at the top.”

I realize many will consider this wasted breath with all the turmoil unleashed by the new administration in Washington, but that will not deter me from making the point as loudly as I can. Because what Soviet-American nuclear arms control was to world stability since the 1970s, U.S.-Chinese A.I. collaboration to make sure we effectively control these rapidly advancing A.I. systems will be for the stability of tomorrow’s world.

A.I. systems and humanoid robots offer so much potential benefit to humanity, but they could be hugely destructive and destabilizing if not embedded with the right values and controls. In addition, this new age must be defined by a lot of planning about what humans will do for work, and how to preserve the dignity they derive from work, when machines will be able to do so many things better than people. Millions of people possibly losing their jobs and dignity at the same time is a prescription for disorder.

A veteran Chinese economist made clear to me that China is very alive to these risks: “Today, a lot of Chinese cannot find jobs. With A.I. they will not be able to find jobs forever. What happens if they cannot find appropriate jobs” because “70 percent of civil servants are robots? That will be super risky.”