China moves to strengthen regulation of AI safety and ethics

China’s top legislative body said it would require stronger regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) safety and ethics in an amendment to the country’s Cybersecurity Law.

Wang Xiang, spokesman for the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, told reporters in Beijing on Thursday that the amendment draft had been reviewed for the first time last month.

At that time, it was agreed that the draft would be amended to become the “guiding principle for work related to internet safety”, AI-related content would be added, and protection of individual personal information would be better aligned with the Civil Code, according to Wang.

Wang added that since the Cybersecurity Law was enacted in 2016, new technology had given rise to new challenges and illegal online activities were still frequent, and the amendments addressed these new problems.

He said a framework provision on AI security and development would be added and would include support for basic AI theory research and development of key technologies.

It will also include clauses on basic infrastructure, improving ethical norms, strengthening security risk monitoring and assessment, and improving security regulation related to AI, according to Wang.