Center for AI Safety

@cais · Twitter · 2026-09-12 17:03 UTC

“We can’t slow down because China will beat us.” We can slow down. Chinese AI is waterskiing behind the US. Their AI capabilities come at a delay since they mainly come from distilling US AIs. If we slow down, they slow down. Next, we can propose to cooperate and make this more robust with onsite inspectors. “We will slow down if you do too.” This is incentive-compatible for China. If both sides are slowed by roughly the same factor, while the risk of losing control of our AIs is reduced, then this does not really harm China’s competitiveness but it makes them safer. It’s incentive-compatible, and @elonmusk is possibly best positioned to lead US-China negotiations. Then, if China refuses to slowdown and safeguard their future AIs, there are a variety of measures we could take. To get an agreement, the US can apply typical forms of negotiation pressure. The US could also disrupt their AIs (e.g., backdoor models by poisoning pretraining data, many other possibilities at http://aibetrayal.com) that could interfere with their AI development or deployment if they were uncooperative. Begin with unilateral restraint, then propose to cooperate. If that fails, consider measures to counteract them. A US-China slowdown is possible.