“Is China Serious About AI Safety?” by Karson Elmgren, Scott Singer, Oliver Guest

This summer, the World AI Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai began to live up to its name. Previously an almost exclusively domestic event, this year's event attracted a larger group of international visitors to witness the would-be marvels of China's AI ecosystem. It also provided an opportunity to engage foreign counterparts for one of the newest elements of that ecosystem: the China AI Safety and Development Association (CnAISDA). Launched in February 2025 on the sidelines of the Paris AI Action Summit, CnAISDA places China among a small number of jurisdictions with dedicated AI safety institutes, or AISIs — although they increasingly go by other names. AISIs are government-backed institutions with a focus on AI risks, sometimes explicitly including catastrophic risk. Given the otherwise zygotic state of efforts to address potential catastrophic risks of frontier AI systems in China, CnAISDA is potentially a kernel of important things to come. But [...] ---Outline:(01:20) International Convergence?(04:00) An All-Star Team, with Limited Resources(07:07) China's Efforts to Lead on AI Diplomacy(11:04) The Road Ahead(12:44) Discussion about this post --- First published: October 14th, 2025 Source: https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/is-china-serious-about-ai-safety --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.