China News Service, March 26. The 2024 Annual Meeting of the China Development Forum will be held on March 24-25, 2024. The "Symposium on Artificial Intelligence Development and Governance" was held on the afternoon of March 24. Xue Lan, Dean of Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University, said in his speech in the "Group Discussion II" session that risk prevention and governance of artificial intelligence face five challenges :
The first is the issue of inconsistent pace. Artificial intelligence technology is developing very fast, but changes in the governance system are relatively slow, because the introduction of each law and regulation requires a series of demonstrations and multiple considerations.
The second is the problem of information asymmetry. The survey found that the government, as the main body of governance, and enterprises as the subject of regulation, have blind spots on both sides. First of all, enterprises do not know the issues that government governance is most concerned about; conversely, the government is also unclear about the risks that technology may bring. There is asymmetric information between the two parties, and sometimes there is a situation of "shared ignorance."
The third is the problem of cost asymmetry in the risk regulation process. The technical cost of abusing or misusing artificial intelligence is quite low, but the cost of preventing the risks of artificial intelligence technology is much higher than the harm it may cause, so the cost of governance is very high.
The fourth issue is the global governance system. Global governance is often associated with a complex of mechanisms. No country, international organization or enterprise can solve this problem independently. Artificial intelligence is a typical example. There may be professional organizations, international organizations, enterprises, and other organizations that are interested in a certain field and have certain conditions and capabilities, and they all want to participate in governance. There may be no affiliation between these organizations, and they may overlap or even contradict each other, which makes the formation of a global governance system very difficult.
Fifth is geopolitical issues. Currently, China and the United States are competing fiercely in the field of science and technology, and there is a problem of technological suppression, and this kind of geopolitics will bring corresponding problems. Therefore, there must also be Sino-US cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence governance.
Regarding how to solve the problem, Xue Lan mentioned that the first is to strengthen technology research and development in the security field, especially to strengthen international cooperation; the second is to advocate agile governance; the third is to encourage internal self-regulation of enterprises; the fourth is to strengthen global governance; and the fifth is to break the "small courtyard" "High Wall" to strengthen cooperation between China and the United States in the field of artificial intelligence.