Washington witnessed a pivotal gathering of artificial intelligence experts this week as the Center for Strategic and International Studies hosted an in-depth analysis of the newly released International AI Safety Report 2026. This second edition of the comprehensive global assessment, chaired by Turing Award laureate Professor Yoshua Bengio of Universite de Montreal and the Mila-Quebec AI Institute, represents a collaborative effort spanning more than 30 nations and international organizations, including significant contributions from China.
The seminar revealed that international coordination has emerged as the paramount concern in addressing AI’s rapidly evolving risks. Stephen Clare, the report’s lead writer, explained the foundational purpose: “to build a shared evidence base to inform decision-making about AI technologies” amid widespread uncertainty about the actual technical realities.
Technical safeguards expert Stephen Casper presented a detailed examination of frontier model development stages, emphasizing that “different types of safeguards and risk management techniques apply at different parts in the life cycle.” While acknowledging progress in creating multi-layered defenses, Casper highlighted persistent governance gaps, particularly concerning open-weight models that cannot be recalled once released and whose safeguards are easier to remove.
The report particularly noted China’s substantial contributions to the AI landscape, accounting for 24.2% of notable models in 2024. Chinese advancements including DeepSeek R1, Alibaba’s Qwen series, Tencent’s Hunyuan-Large, and Moonshot AI’s Kimi models have narrowed the capability gap with leading closed models to less than one year in certain cases. China’s AI Safety Governance Framework 2.0 (2025) received special recognition for providing structured guidance on risk categorization and countermeasures throughout the AI lifecycle.
Despite the daunting challenges posed by AI’s rapid progression, Professor Bengio expressed optimism based on the collaborative spirit demonstrated by the international expert community. The report deliberately avoids specific policy recommendations, instead focusing on synthesizing scientific evidence to support informed policymaking and establish a shared evidence base for global decision-makers navigating this complex technological landscape.