As artificial intelligence continues to reshape nearly every sector of the global economy, leading technology experts and researchers are issuing a urgent call for the world’s two largest AI powers, the United States and China, to set aside geopolitical rivalry and collaborate on the development of shared safety and ethical frameworks for advanced AI development. Experts warn that a fragmented, competition-first approach to AI regulation would carry severe risks for all nations, undermining the technology’s transformative benefits while amplifying unaddressed safety hazards.
Speaking with China Daily on the sidelines of the recent HumanX conference held in San Francisco, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nand Mulchandani — whose tech startups have been acquired by industry giants including Oracle, VMware and Cisco — emphasized that consistent, global industry standards are a non-negotiable foundation for AI to scale safely and deliver widespread public benefit.
“A uniform set of standards works for every nation, because it gives all countries access to the benefits that come from commoditized, scalable technology, systems and products,” Mulchandani explained. He drew on decades of global telecommunications history to illustrate the power of interoperable, shared standards, pointing to international mobile roaming as a model for what cross-border cooperation can achieve.
“Roaming works seamlessly for consumers across the globe precisely because we agreed on common protocols and technology standards decades ago,” he said. “A uniform set of technical rules that work everywhere creates tangible benefits for end users everywhere. Just as open, flat architectural standards fueled the global growth of the internet that lifted all participants, a divided approach to AI would leave everyone worse off. If the U.S. and China move forward with incompatible, separate AI standards, that would be a collective failure — a lose-lose outcome for the entire world.”
Mulchandani acknowledged the inherent tension between national competitive interests and global collective good, noting that the two powers will need to navigate a nuanced balance between competition and cooperation. “The U.S. and China have to figure out where competitive dynamics fit and where cooperative goals take priority — they will have areas of healthy competition, and they will also have clear areas where collaboration serves everyone,” he added.
His call echoes a recent commentary from a group of global AI researchers published by the Brookings Institution, which urged the two leading AI superpowers to abandon zero-sum geopolitical thinking and prioritize joint work on AI safety guardrails. The researchers argued that fixating on gaining unilateral national advantage obscures the larger shared risks and opportunities of advanced AI development.
“Instead of obsessing over which country is ahead, or what the U.S. can do to slow China’s AI progress, American policymakers need to accept a simple reality: the United States and China will advance alongside each other at the cutting edge of AI technology for the foreseeable future,” the researchers wrote. “Neither side will gain a permanent, decisive advantage over the other.”
The researchers project that top AI laboratories in both countries will make parallel progress toward advanced agentic AI systems and artificial general intelligence (AGI) in coming years, making early coordination on safety measures even more urgent to prevent unregulated, high-risk development.
Donald Lewis, non-resident fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, noted that even amid ongoing broader diplomatic tensions between the two nations, the structural groundwork for meaningful AI cooperation is already in place. Lewis pointed to decades of people-to-people and industry ties between Silicon Valley and Chinese technology firms as a solid foundation to build collaborative efforts on AI.
“I believe there are very strong prospects for U.S.-China collaboration on AI development over the next several years, if not decades,” Lewis told China Daily. “Even during the Trump administration, policymakers floated the realistic, promising idea of a US-China G2 for key strategic sectors — and strategic AI is one area where that framework makes a great deal of sense.”
Lewis highlighted AI-driven climate and energy innovation as an especially promising area for early joint work, noting that the two countries are the undisputed global leaders in AI research and development, with all other nations falling far behind in investment and capability. “The U.S. and China are the primary global competitors in the fast-expanding AI ecosystem, but that leadership also gives them a unique responsibility to collaborate for global public good,” Lewis said. “AI should be the next chapter in what can be a mutually fruitful cooperation between the two powers that benefits the entire world.”