Key facts
- Huawei's rotating chairman, Eric Xu, believes Chinese AI developers may not yet be advanced enough to experience the safety risks reported by leading U.S. firms.
- Xu suggested Chinese AI providers might need to accelerate their development to encounter similar risks to those faced by frontier U.S. AI models.
- Huawei forecasts that AI agents will account for more than 90% of global AI processing traffic by 2035.
- Huawei is China's main domestic supplier of computing infrastructure for advanced AI model training.
- U.S. export controls since 2023 have restricted Chinese companies' access to cutting-edge chips, impacting China's AI chip market.
- Xu stated that Huawei cannot produce enough AI computing equipment to satisfy domestic demand.
Huawei's rotating chairman, Eric Xu, suggested that Chinese AI developers may not yet be advanced enough to experience the safety risks reported by leading U.S. firms, arguing they should continue developing more powerful models while balancing innovation against risk. His comments come as alarm over AI safety has intensified in the United States, where developers and researchers have warned that increasingly autonomous systems could bypass safeguards or become difficult to control.
Xu told reporters at Huawei's annual Connect conference in Shanghai that U.S. AI providers, due to their massive computing power, might be the only ones who truly understand the level of their models and the risks associated with them. He posited that Chinese AI model providers might need to accelerate their development to reach a point where they can also perceive these risks.
China has generally adopted a different approach, viewing advanced AI as a powerful but manageable technology and proceeding with rapid deployment. The country is developing mandatory standards and safeguards against risks, including autonomous agents circumventing controls or attacking outside systems, and is drafting a mandatory national standard for AI agent safety.
Huawei forecasts that AI agents, which can plan tasks and make decisions with limited human supervision, will account for more than 90% of global AI processing traffic by 2035, projecting as many as 900 billion active agents by then. The company identified agent security and privacy as crucial technologies.
Huawei is China's primary domestic supplier of the computing infrastructure required to train advanced AI models. Its significant role in China's $50 billion AI chip market is a direct consequence of U.S. export controls implemented since 2023, which have restricted Chinese companies' access to cutting-edge chips from U.S. firms like Nvidia. Xu also separately stated that Huawei cannot produce enough AI computing equipment to meet domestic demand.