Opinion | US-China trade talks should pave way for AI safety treaty

Few expected it would happen this fast, but there is widespread relief at the news that China and the United States are talking again. In only a few days, renewed trade talks have resulted in temporary but large reductions of the mutual tariffs that seemed so impregnable just a few weeks ago.

Since collaboration, rather than conflict, has proven to be a realistic option for trade, it should also be pursued in a different and perhaps even more crucial domain: the race towards advanced artificial intelligence (AI).

China’s DeepSeek moment came in January, when the Hangzhou-based AI company DeepSeek released both a free chatbot app and a reasoning model called R1. The app quickly became a global hit, dethroning OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most downloaded app on Apple’s US app store in two weeks. This moment demonstrated to the world what experts already knew: despite US-imposed hardware restrictions, Chinese firms are close behind leading US AI companies such as OpenAI and Google DeepMind, and in some aspects even ahead.

The AI revolution is starting to take shape. AI’s capabilities are steadily increasing, and further breakthroughs could take us all the way to human-level AI, also called artificial general intelligence. AGI, which could do a broad range of cognitive tasks at human level, would bring huge opportunities but equally large risks.

On the plus side, AI could generate significant economic growth. If we manage to spread this wealth fairly, it could lift billions of people out of poverty. In addition, AI might help improve global education, healthcare and efforts to fight climate change.

Impressive as these promises sound, the risks of human-level AI are perhaps even bigger. If AGI is better at enough jobs than we are, including any new jobs a growing economy might generate, this could lead to mass unemployment. This could give rise to greater inequality and social unrest. In addition, AGI could help terrorists build bioweapons or commit large-scale cyberattacks.