Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

China said Wednesday (February 12, 2025) that it opposes “politicising” issues involving technology and trade, after U.S. Vice President JD Vance warned that “authoritarian regimes” were seeking to use artificial intelligence for increased control over citizens.

World leaders gathered in Paris this week for an AI summit, with dozens of nations signing a statement calling for enhanced regulation of the technology to make it “open” and “ethical”.

But the United States — which dominates the increasingly vital sector — did not sign the communique, along with the United Kingdom.

In a thinly veiled shot at China, Mr. Vance cautioned against cooperation with “authoritarian regimes” in AI, saying that “partnering with them means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure”.

Asked about the comments Wednesday during a regular press conference in Beijing, China’s Foreign Ministry said that it “attaches importance to the security of AI”.

“We oppose the practices of drawing lines based on ideology, generalising the concept of national security and politicising economic, trade and technological issues,” ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said.

Guo added that China “advocate(s) open-source AI technology and promote(s) the accessibility of AI services”.

San Francisco:

Chinese AI sensation DeepSeek on Monday said it was limiting the registration of new users due to large-scale cyberattacks on its services.

The company, whose chatbot took over OpenAI’s ChatGPT as Apple’s top downloaded app on Monday, cited “large-scale malicious attacks” for outages and its inability to take on new users.

DeepSeek, which was developed by a start-up based in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, has shown the ability to match the capacity of AI pace-setters such as Nvidia.

Its success on the US app store sent shares in AI-linked tech giants plummeting on Monday.

The low-cost Chinese generative AI venture is thought to have matched US companies in its abilities but at a fraction of the cost.

Analysts had long thought that the United States’ critical advantage over China when it comes to producing high-powered chips — and its ability to prevent the Asian power from accessing the technology — would give it the edge in the AI race.

Available as an app or on desktop, DeepSeek can do many of the things that its Western competitors can do — write song lyrics, help work on a personal development plan, or even write a recipe for dinner based on what’s in the fridge.

It is however subject to the censorship seen in other Chinese-made chatbots like Baidu’s Ernie Bot that are very limited on how they interact on political topics.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)