China isn't waiting to set down rules on generative AI

Last week, I went on the CBC News podcast "Nothing Is Foreign" to talk about the draft regulation--and what it means for the Chinese government to take such quick action on a still-very-new technology. As I said in the podcast, I see the draft regulation as a mixture of sensible restrictions on AI risks and a continuation of China's strong government tradition of aggressive intervention in the tech industry. Many of the clauses in the draft regulation are principles that AI critics are advocating for in the West: data used to train generative AI models shouldn't infringe on intellectual property or privacy; algorithms shouldn't discriminate against users on the basis of race, ethnicity, age, gender, and other attributes; AI companies should be transparent about how they obtained training data and how they hired humans to label the data. At the same time, there are rules that other countries would likely balk at. The government is asking that people who use these generative AI tools register with their real identity--just as on any social platform in China.