Governments, industry and the public are in “common ignorance” about the present and future of artificial intelligence, making both international collaboration and coordination between industry and policymakers necessary, experts have said.

In a panel discussion at the inaugural Hong Kong Global AI Governance Conference at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) on Saturday, Alibaba Group Holding policy lead Fu Hongyu said that China was now at the front lines of global efforts to introduce guardrails surrounding the fast-changing technology.

“We are in a dilemma that can be called common ignorance,” he said. “We do not know what is going on and where the technology is going.”

Fu’s warning comes as powerful new AI models have triggered concerns that they could be used to mount massive cyberattacks or cause widespread social harm.

In the US, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell called an emergency meeting last week with the heads of major US banks to discuss the risks surrounding AI start-up Anthropic’s latest model, Mythos, as well as potential future models, Bloomberg reported.

With Chinese models widely considered to be around three to six months behind their US counterparts, Beijing’s position on AI governance had always been the need to balance AI development and safety, said Fu, director of AI governance at Alibaba’s research institute, AliResearch. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.