Researchers from the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) visited one of China’s leading AI research centres recently, for the launch of a new bilateral China-UK Research Centre for AI Ethics and Governance (“ChinUK”). Led by Professor Yi Zeng of the Institute of Automation (CASIA) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Professor Huw Price of LCFI, ChinUK aims to support exchanges and collaboration between scholars in China and the UK, in the new interdisciplinary field studying the ethics and impacts of AI.

Professor Price exchanged copies of a new MoU with Professor Cheng-Lin Liu, Vice-President of CASIA, at the ChinUK inauguration ceremony in Beijing on Monday 4 November. LCFI researchers Martina Kunz, Yang Liu and Danit Gal, as well as Huw Price, presented talks at the first ChinUK joint workshop. 

Professor Zeng said: “ChinUK is a cross-cultural and transdisciplinary centre on AI Ethics and Governance. Its mission is to build bridges between Eastern and Western perspectives on AI, linking scholars in China and UK for sharing, interaction, and complementary research. In this way the new CASIA-LCFI partnership will help to promote the development of AI for humanity, ecology, and social good, and for a shared future of Human-AI Symbiosis.”

Professor Price said: “We are delighted to be linked to CASIA in this way. Collaborations between China and the West will be vital in ensuring that AI Is safe and beneficial. China will be a leader in the development of AI, and its voice will be just as important in global conversations about the impacts of this technology. ChinUK will support these conversations.”