Artificial intelligence is emerging as a key topic at the ongoing 13th Beijing Xiangshan Forum, where international experts warned that the accelerating military application of AI has become a new challenge demanding joint global governance.
With the theme "Build Consensus on Stability, Advance Security Governance Together", this year's forum opened on Tuesday and will run through Thursday, bringing together experts and scholars from about 100 countries, regions and international organizations.
Speaking at the forum's "High-end Interview," British scholar Jean Christophe Iseux von Pfetten, chairman of the Royal Institute for East-West Strategic Studies in Britain, said that as some international security dialogue mechanisms are increasingly affected by bloc confrontation, truly effective security dialogue must first bring all parties with different positions to the table.
This is his fourth time attending the Beijing Xiangshan Forum.
"The Xiangshan [Forum's] competitive advantage is to be able to get everybody to sit at the same table and to have a dialogue, and to try to find a solution," he said.
The scholar noted that the forum has previously provided a platform for direct exchanges between representatives of different camps on hotspot issues such as the crisis in Ukraine. This year's forum has also held a special discussion on the Middle East, with the participation of representatives from different parties to the conflict. In addition to traditional security issues, the weight of emerging technology topics such as AI has further increased.
"I think that maybe something which is in the agenda I have seen, which I've not seen so much in the past, is around AI. There are a couple of panels on AI, and this is relatively new. The emphasis on technology is actually more prominent, I think, this year than last year," he said.
The rapid development of AI technology and its military application has also become a topic of concern for delegates at the forum. Representatives exchanged views on AI autonomous decision-making, the boundaries of military application and related governance mechanisms.
"Now, the development of AI which makes decisions itself, incorporating with other AI agents. That's why it is important [to have] more deep cooperation," said Vladimir Norov, chairman of the Central Asian Association for Artificial Intelligence, former secretary-general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and former foreign minister of Uzbekistan.
As AI technology continues to enter more decision-making and application scenarios, issues such as the determination of responsibility have also drawn the attention of delegates.
"But at the same time, we should not outsource responsibility to algorithms, to think that it is AI [that is] responsible - [it's] not, it is the responsibility of humans," said Norov.
Experts at the forum said emerging technologies such as AI are posing new practical challenges to global security governance. Strengthening communication and building consensus through multilateral security dialogue platforms such as the Beijing Xiangshan Forum will help advance discussions on relevant rules and reduce the risks of loss of control and miscalculation from the military application of new technologies.
Global experts call for joint efforts on AI security governance at Beijing Xiangshan Forum
