Huawei chief says Chinese AI too far behind to face U.S.-level safety risks

Huawei rotating chairman Eric Xu told reporters on Thursday that Chinese AI developers may not yet be advanced enough to encounter the safety risks reported by leading U.S. firms, urging domestic labs to accelerate rather than slow down.

"If we look at the mainstream AI model providers in the United States, because they have massive computing power, maybe only they themselves know where they are in terms of the level of their models," Xu said at Huawei's annual Connect conference in Shanghai, according to Reuters. "Maybe the type of risk from AI that they can feel, they can perceive, is something that people in China or AI model providers in China cannot."marketscreener

A Call to Speed Up, Not Slow Down

Xu's remarks stand in contrast to growing calls in the United States for caution. OpenAI said this week it would regularly disclose unexpected or unauthorized model behavior, while Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for slowing development so safety measures can keep pace. Xu argued Chinese developers should do the opposite — pushing forward until they reach the capability thresholds where frontier risks become apparent.stratnewsglobal+1

"I think maybe AI model providers in China may need to speed up their pace to the level that they could also feel the risks from AI development," Xu said. "I think we need to strike a balance between driving AI development and managing AI risk."marketscreener+1

Such proposals to slow AI development have drawn sharp criticism in China. Researchers and state media have portrayed Western calls to pace frontier development as a strategy to preserve U.S. companies' technological lead rather than a genuine response to safety concerns.androidheadlines+1

Beijing's Regulatory Approach and Agent Forecasts

China has taken a different regulatory path from the United States. Rather than relying on voluntary corporate safety pledges, Beijing is drafting mandatory national standards for AI agent safety, treating advanced AI as powerful but manageable technology. The standards address risks including autonomous agents circumventing controls or attacking outside systems.marketscreener+1

Huawei forecast this week that autonomous AI agents — systems capable of planning tasks, making decisions, and using tools with limited human supervision — will account for more than 90 percent of global AI processing traffic by 2035, with as many as 900 billion active agents worldwide.mezha+1

The Chip Bottleneck

Xu separately acknowledged on Thursday that Huawei cannot produce enough AI computing equipment to satisfy domestic demand. Huawei has become China's primary supplier of AI training infrastructure after U.S. export controls introduced in 2023 restricted Chinese access to Nvidia's ↘ 4.27% most advanced chips, giving the company an outsized role in what Reuters described as China's $50 billion AI chip market. For Chinese labs striving to match U.S. frontier capabilities, the shortage of computing hardware remains a more immediate barrier than alignment concerns.stratnewsglobal+1