China unveils ethical principles for AI regulation

China’s Ministry of Science and Technology unveiled a set of ethical principles for regulating artificial intelligence, with a focus on protecting user rights and mitigating risks. By design, the authorities hope this will help Beijing become a world leader in AI by 2030, according to SCMP.

In the document, six core principles for AI systems are outlined. Among them:

• ensuring governance and reliability of AI;
• human well-being;
• ensuring fairness and justice;
• protection of privacy and safety;
• improving ethical literacy.

Data security, personal privacy, and the right to opt out of AI-based decision-making are mentioned in the guidance. The document states that people should have the right to choose: use AI-enabled services or stop using them at any time.

The official aim of the guidance is to “ensure that artificial intelligence always remains under human control.”

Risk prevention requires identifying and addressing vulnerabilities in AI systems, ensuring accountability of organisations, and improving governance and quality control of AI products, the document says.

The guiding principles prohibit developing and using AI services for illegal activities, as well as those that threaten national, public, and industrial security. Additionally, they must not harm public interests, the document says.

Rebecca Arcesati, a researcher at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, says this is the first clarification of AI ethics by the PRC government.

“China ultimately chooses a despotic model when the state takes the long-term social transformations that AI will bring very seriously and tries to actively govern and steer them,” she says.

Arcesati added that Chinese authorities are acting with foresight, and the new recommendations are “a clear message to tech giants that have built entire business models on recommendation algorithms.”

Earlier in August China unveiled rules for the use of recommendation algorithms by technology companies.

In August, the Chinese authorities stated that there would be further regulation of technology companies.

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