Artificial Intelligence in Sino-American Relations

Introduction of Alvin Graylin to a Committee for the Republic Salon
on Artificial Intelligence in Sino-American Relations

Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
By Video, 28 May 2025

I’m glad to be back at a Committee for the Republic salon, if only by video link.  It has been a pleasure to interact with our speaker tonight, to whom John Henry introduced me only a few months ago.  You are in for a treat.

Alvin Graylin is that rare American who not only understands artificial intelligence, having started at least four companies involved with the development of AI, but who is au courant with China’s AI industry as well as our own.  He is a thinker who has important things to say and who says them clearly, even if he tosses in an acronym or two.  I remember reading a science fiction novel as a kid in which, on page 3, it was revealed that the Pentagon had had to be torn down after it was discovered that acronyms cause cancer.  I’ve asked Alvin to keep the acronyms to a minimum in case there are people here tonight who are less immersed in the culture and jargon of Silicon Valley or 中关村 than he is.

Alvin sees AI as bringing huge benefits to humankind and can persuasively describe these.  Of course, he also recognizes that the first thing human beings usually do with new interactive technologies, like the internet, is use them for one-upmanship, warfare, the dissemination of pornography, and the perpetration of scams.  As Confucius remarked, the essence of man is gluttony and lust.  (For some reason, he did not mention greed.  I guess he wasn’t a hedge fund guy.)

Alvin believes that it is crucial for the two nations leading the development of AI – China and the United States – to cooperate to maximize the enormous benefits it promises and minimize the risks it poses.  I find his arguments convincing.  I think many of you will too.  We have a great deal to gain from AI if we put the best American and Chinese minds to work at gaining it.  Conversely, if we don’t work together, we face risks that should be countered or avoided.

Will AI manage the battlefields of the future by treating human beings as expendable cannon fodder?  Will it do to white collar workers what automation has done to blue collar workers, eliminating their jobs and making them redundant?  Will it do what another science fiction story I read long ago posited?  In that story, all the world’s computers were connected so that scientists could ask the array a pressing question.  The scientists turned it on and asked it: “Is there a god?”  A lightning bolt then struck its on/off switch, and it spoke, saying: “Now there is!”

There is an urgent need for China and the United States to explore how to use AI to optimize the betterment of the human future while limiting its downside.  Alvin Graylin has thought a lot about why and how to do this, as you will hear.  Please join John and me in welcoming him.