China wants to lead the world on AI regulation — will the plan work?
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In October, at a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated his country’s proposal to create a body known as the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), which would bring nations together as a step towards creating a global governance system for AI. ...
How does the Chinese AI ecosystem differ from those of other countries?
Encouraged by the government, Chinese firms tend to release models as open weight, meaning that they can be downloaded and built on. And compared with Western nations, China has less of a focus on making machines that could outsmart humans — often referred to as artificial general intelligence — and is instead concentrating on a race to use AI to drive economic growth. ...
Developers of public-facing AI-powered services must let Chinese regulators test their systems ahead of deployment, says Ng. The result is that models such as those developed by the Hangzhou-based company DeepSeek, which found world fame with its R1 modelearlier this year, are among “the most regulated in the world”, says Joanna Bryson, a computer scientist and researcher in AI ethics at the Hertie School in Berlin. Despite this, the authorities often take a soft approach to enforcing that regulation, says Angela Zhang, a law researcher and specialist in AI regulation at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. ...
By contrast, the United States has no comprehensive legislation on AI at the federal level, and in January President Donald Trump revoked an executive order aimed at ensuring AI safety. ... The European Union approach has been to classify AI systems by risk level, ...
What has China proposed?
WAICO would be a way for countries to coordinate AI governance rules while “fully respecting the differences in national policies and practices” and championing the global south, Chinese officials have said. ...
See the full story here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03902-y
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