2023-10-03 15:30 - 17:00 E.19.03
China’s Artificial Intelligence Ethics: Policy Development in an Emergent Community of Practice
Abstract: This talk is devoted to 1) explaining the evolution in China’s discourses and policy measures on ethical risks associated with AI; and 2) dynamics internal to China’s decision-making processes as sources of such evolution. Among the few pioneering studies touching on China’s AI ethics, analysis tends to focus on one or a few AI policy documents, omitting a comprehensive review, thereby missing the opportunity to identify some patterns and trends in the Chinese approach to ethical AI. This talk intends to provide a fuller account of the changes underway in China’s perspectives on the ethical risks of artificial intelligence (AI) based on my recent research and fieldwork in China (November 2022 – January 2023 in Beijing and Shanghai; April to May 2023, online). It adopts a community-of-practice (CoP) approach to the study of Chinese policymaking in the field of AI, showing that the Chinese approach to ethical AI emerges from the communication of practices of a relatively stable group of actors from three domains—the government, academia, and the private sector. This talk draws attention to overlaps and potential tensions between Chinese and European understandings of AI ethics.
Bio: Dr Guangyu (Karin) Qiao-Franco (BA&MA-FudanUni; PhD-UniMelb) is Assistant Professor of International Relations, Radboud University. Previously, she was a postdoc of the ERC-funded AutoNorms project at the Centre for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark (2021-2023). She holds a PhD degree in international relations from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include practice theory, norm contestation, norm diffusion, international organisations, China studies, ASEAN regional governance, emerging technologies (especially AI and cyber security), and non-traditional security issues (such as climate change and human trafficking). Her recent work appears in International Affairs, The Pacific Review, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Chinese Journal of International Politics and Journal of Contemporary China. She is the author of the book UN-ASEAN Coordination: Policy Transfer and Regional Cooperation Against Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia (Edward Elgar, 2023).