China says AI CEOs' call for a slowdown is 'fear mongering'

BEIJING — China on Monday pushed back on calls by U.S. AI executives for companies to slow down the development of the cutting-edge technology. "Fear mongering, confrontation, competition will just disrupt [the] process of global AI governance," Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, said on Monday, per an English translation published by Reuters. He was responding to a question about U.S. CEOs, including Anthropic's Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk, calling for the industry to slow down because of the dangers rapid advances in the technology pose.