China's AI initiative serves common good

Talking with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the end of the world's first AI Safety Summit held at Bletchley Park on Nov 1-2, US entrepreneur Elon Musk thanked him for inviting China, saying "If they're not participants, it's pointless."

The same view was expressed by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace President Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, who stressed that China's participation makes the summit a truly global dialogue. Many other experts also said China's presence at such meetings is essential.

Data from the World Intellectual Property Organization show Chinese institutions applied for as many as 29,863 AI-related patents last year, accounting for more than 40 percent of the world's total. As such, politicians, entrepreneurs and organization with even the basic knowledge of artificial intelligence cannot afford to keep China away from any global AI summit, let alone turn it into a biased discussion as some scatterbrained Western politicians tried to do before the Bletchley Park meeting.