China's former UK ambassador clashes with 'AI godfather' at summit


China

Published 10 February 2025 A former Chinese official poked fun at a major international AI safety report led by "AI Godfather" professor Yoshua Bengio and co-authored by 96 global experts – in front of him. Fu Ying, former vice minister of foreign affairs and once China's UK ambassador, is now an academic at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The pair were speaking at a panel discussion ahead of a two-day global AI summit starting in Paris on Monday. The aim of the summit is to unite world leaders, tech executives, and academics to examine AI's impact on society, governance, and the environment. Fu Ying began by thanking Canada's Prof Bengio for the "very, very long" document, adding that the Chinese translation stretched to around 400 pages and she hadn't finished reading it. She also had a dig at the title of the AI Safety Institute – of which Prof Bengio is a member. China now has its own equivalent; but they decided to call it The AI Development and Safety Network, she said, because there are lots of institutes already but this wording emphasised the importance of collaboration. The AI Action Summit is welcoming guests from 80 countries, with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Microsoft president Brad Smith and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai among the big names in US tech attending. Elon Musk is not on the guest list but it is currently unknown whether he will decide to join them. A key focus is regulating AI in an increasingly fractured world. The summit comes weeks after a seismic industry shift as China's DeepSeek unveiled a powerful, low-cost AI model, challenging US dominance.